


The Winter Assassin

by HarmonySong



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, F/M, Hydra (Marvel), Insecurity, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reader Has Powers, Reader-Insert, Recovery, bucky isn't the winter soldier, slow-burn, well he is but not quite, you'll see - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-10-24
Packaged: 2018-08-14 04:50:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7999219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarmonySong/pseuds/HarmonySong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last thing Bucky remembers is being put under ice. Steve tells him that was 70 years ago.<br/>What neither of them get is why? Why would they go to all that trouble to create a super soldier if they were never going to use it?<br/>The answer involves several assassination attempts, a long-lost old friend turned enemy, and a new prisoner at Avengers Tower. Turns out, Bucky and Steve aren't the only super soldiers in existence, after all. </p><p>In which the reader has powers, no memories, and a crap-ton of super soldier serum.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_"Asset, your next targets are these two men. They are dangers to us and should be destroyed at all costs."_

_She glances over the feeds, wondering why they seem faintly familiar. One, blond-haired and straight-jawed, smiles as he talks. The other, darker and longer of hair, stays quiet. Both are trained soldiers. Unusual, for her to take out two soldiers, even highly trained ones. She knows they are aware of even the slightest change in their environment and have backup plans for their backup plans, but no matter their expertise, it is without precedent. Usually, she is sent to take out the leader, the controller of the soldiers; usually, the troops are the dispensable trash she takes out along the way. It is unusual to be asked to take out only the two soldiers without the leader, but perhaps they have none and that is why it makes them dangerous._

_In any case, it is not her place to question her masters._

_She does not nod, nor does she salute. She was never told the proper etiquette for taking orders, and does not wish to be sent back into the machine for using the wrong honorific. Instead, she simply takes up the tablet with the intel and walks away._

_She has a mission to complete._

 

* * *

 

She takes the first few days to scope out the place. They live in a huge tower called Avengers Tower, surrounded by others she senses are as much of a threat as her targets. She does not know why she was only instructed to take out the two soldiers and not the entire lot of them, but she does not question it. Her masters know best. 

For soldiers, though, they do not seem overly troubled. Perhaps the darker haired one is; she hears him scream night after night through the ventilation shaft and tells herself it is not sympathetic pity she feels for him swelling in her chest. She hears all of them scream in their dreams, occasionally; she knows that it is simply a soldier thing. No one can escape from war unscathed; them least of all. 

Overall, however, they seem content. They joke around, prank each other, and it's in some moments, seeing them comfort and distract and train with one another, that she wishes she was one of them. She shakes it off, though, because comfort and friendship and love are not for her. She is a weapon created for one purpose, and that purpose is to destroy. Once her usefulness has expired, so will she. She has no thoughts other than those her masters gave her, nor does she want any. 

She quickly figures out that sniping will not work. Avengers Tower has force fields around it that prevent bullets and alerts them if anyone should try to shoot them. She'd have to have her targets out of the tower, preferably alone, for it to work. And from the days she's watched them, it doesn't seem like there's ever a time when they're not either inside the building or in a plane flying out on a mission. 

Indeed, she knows not what  _will_ work, short of blowing the whole building up (she's not sure if even that would work; she's sure that this building, high-tech as it is, would be able to detect a bomb, or have some kind of creature that could). Finally, however, in a random spot of luck almost two weeks after she was first tasked here, her two targets leave to wander around the streets. Alone.

She doesn't know if they're asking for trouble, naive, or just that confident in their abilities, but they bring no one else with them, nor do they bring any visible weapon, though she knows there are hidden ones. As well trained as these men seem to be, there's no way they're stupid enough to leave their highly guarded tower without a weapon of some sort. 

She gets in position, lines up the cross-hairs with the blond's head. As she goes to pull the trigger, the dark-haired one's face changes and he shoves Target 1 down. She silently curses and abandons her sniper rifle. Target 2 has an uncanny sense of danger; a clear survivalist, just like her. It's almost a shame she has to kill him. 

She nimbly descends from the building, her hands creating a wall of air that slows her fall enough for her to roll through the impact without getting hurt. She lands noiselessly behind them, but as expected, Target 2 senses her arrival instantly and shoves his blond friend one way as he rolls another, scrambling to his feet. They both turn to face her. 

Target 2 tilts his head in confusion. Target 1 pales. 

"Y/n," Target 1 breathes out. 

The name feels like a punch to the gut, and it's all she can do to keep herself blank. That name...she swears she's heard it before. But it is not her. She is known only as the Asset, or the Winter Assassin if she must be known by anything else. 

"Y/n," Target 1 tries again, "Please, put down your weapons. We're not gonna fight you." 

There's a moment of confusion, although she doubts it shows on her face. She simply opens her hands, showing there's no weapons in them, and waits. Waits for them to make the first move.

A few seconds tick by. Targets 1 and 2 stay immobile. 

_That's new._

Does she have to attack first? In all her experience, that's never happened. Everyone she's ever fought has always lost their nerve and attacked first. 

With a concealed sigh, she moves to attack them. They counter at a speed as fast as hers, something that's never happened. It's slightly unnerving, but she doesn't let it bother her too much. She is simply a weapon, and if she fails, her masters will have another after her, a better one. 

"Y/n, please, we don't want to fight you." 

She doesn't know why Target 1 keeps calling her that, as if he knows her. She does not know him; he does not know her. 

Target 2 manages to catch her off-guard and lands a solid hit. It's instinct that sends him flying back 10 yards, landing in a heap on the ground. She frowns, just slightly. A burst of energy that strong should've sent him back further than that. Is she becoming weak? 

Target 1 sends a punch her way that she easily dodges. Her eyes narrow. He's not good at faking; she can tell he does not mean to hurt her. But why? He's a soldier; he's killed countless people, she's sure, and she _is_ the one that attacked him first. 

Does he not perceive her as a threat? 

Anger flares up in her, and the air around her changes, swirling around her like a mini-tornado. She is a weapon, forged by Hydra. She is as much of a threat as anything this man will ever face. 

"Hey hey hey," the man says, all in a rush. His voice feels...strange. Like she's heard something similar to it before, long ago. It's much deeper than what her brain is trying to connect it to, but the connection, as tenuous as it is, still exists. "Hey, Y/n, look at me. Look at me. We're not gonna hu-" 

She sighs, following his flying body over to the wall it crashes into. 

"Hey sweetheart, forgot about me," Target 2 whispers into her ear as he grabs her around the neck. For a moment, she loses her grip on the air around her and panics, but she regains herself in seconds, sending him flying backwards, his nails ripping into her neck as he does so. She takes one breath, just enough to see if he's done any damage to her windpipe, and when she confirms she can still breathe she stretches out her hands to both her targets and pulls. 

They collide with each other, the impact stunning them for a few seconds. She's grateful because once again, it was harder than she expected. For some reason, they're much heavier than they look. She can't rely on her powers to get her out of this; she's going to have to do some actual fighting if they end up giving her any more trouble. 

She says nothing, gives no warning, simply grabs them both by the throat and begins to suffocate them. The sheer weight of holding their bodies in one hand is exhausting; after only a half-minute, she's forced to drop them, panting. Instead of allowing both them and herself time to recover, she focuses on one of them, the blond, and grabs his head. One wrench of the neck is all she needs to do, quick and brutal. 

"Y/n," he gasps, interrupting her just as she's about to do it, hand feebly moving towards her. How pathetic. "Come on...need to..." he gags as her hands tighten around his neck again, "remem-"

She thrown off by the brunet, whose eyes are dark and feral. Not quite Hydra-trained, but close. Interesting. His arm raises, and instantly she realizes why he, at least, is so heavy. 

His arm- it's made of metal. 

She doesn't need to make calculations to know that when that hand makes contact with her face, it will either knock her out or kill her. She summons her powers and chokes him, then uses his other arm to grab the metal one, stopping it mid-flight. 

"Bucky!" the blond yells. "Don't hurt her!" 

 _I'm not a civilian,_ she thinks spitefully.  _If I'm gonna die, I'm gonna go down with a fight, not in a nursing home._ She rolls, kneeing the brunet in the groin, and scrambles up, only to come face-to-face with the other man. Seriously, maybe she should've tried taking them down one at a time, not both at once. But her masters had begun to get impatient, and she knows they would've recalled her if she hadn't made any headway within three weeks. 

"Come on, Y/n," he pleads to her, "we're not the bad guys here.  _Think._ I know you remember us." 

She does not remember them, and she decides to ignore the niggling feeling that she might remember two people that were like them, once. She sends a flurry of punches and kicks his way that he meets barely, and she knows she could easily have taken this one down without his pal around to take away the element of surprise. 

Speaking of that pal...

 _Surprise, surprise,_ she thinks as he tackles her yet  _again,_ metal arm hitting her over the head. Does he have a thing for her or something? He really likes to get on top of her. 

The impact almost knocks her out; her vision takes on a red tint and when she tries to move, it's sluggish. She faintly hears Target 1 yelling at him, calling him Bucky (why does that name sound familiar?) and the brown-haired man turns back and yells at him, saying she's a danger, not their friend anymore. He calls the blond  _Steve,_ and that's the name that hurts the most-  _why_ does it hurt? 

With the last of her strength, she pushes herself off the ground. If she can't fight them off together, she'll need to make a way to find them, alone. But for now, she needs to escape. The blond man- Steve- looks down at her, expression unreadable in the I-don't- _want-_ to-read-it kinda way, and Bucky, Target 2, turns around and pulls back his arm for one last punch. 

She knows that  _that_ will, for sure, knock her out, and she does not want to be around for when they take her back to their tower and torture her. She's had enough torture to last five lifetimes. 

She gathers her last reserves of strength and pushes down against the air surrounding her, taking off the ground. The higher she gets, however, the more sluggish she feels, and without warning her brain cuts out, sending her plummeting back to earth. 

Her last thought is the sight of her two targets. 

 

* * *

 

She wakes up to voices surrounding her and a quiet beeping right next to her ear. When she tries to move, she's brought up short by the manacles on all four limbs, and she can feel needles poking into her flesh.

Panic brings her fully conscious in under a second. No no no no no she made a mistake, she miscalculated her target's strength, it's okay, she can do better! She looks around wildly for her masters, trying to find them, to look them in the eye and promise them that this time, she'll do better, just please, please don't put her in the scrambler again.

All the faces are unfamiliar, blurred by what she dimly knows are her tears, and the voices are all unfamiliar- except two.

And that's when she realizes where she is.

Her heart rate slows, the beeping slowing with it, and she realizes that she must be hooked up to- what do they call them nowadays? Heart monitors?

She looks around, slowly this time, and takes stock of her fellow occupants. Her two targets, a person she guesses is a doctor, a dark-haired guy partially covered in red armor, a young, brown-haired girl, and the red-haired woman she'd marked as a fellow assassin the instant she saw her. In fact, more than just a fellow assassin; if her time spent in the Red Room in the early 2000s is correct, she's...

"Natasha Romanoff," she says. "I've heard quite a lot about you." 

The woman blinks, as much surprise as she'll show. "I can't say the same about you, I'm afraid. We don't even know your name." 

"Nat, I've  _told_ you, it's-" the assassin looks at Ste- at the blond guy- and he shuts up. 

"I do not possess a name," she says simply, ignoring the surprised looks she gets. "I am the Asset, or if you prefer, the Winter Assassin. It does not matter what you wish to call me; you could even call me bitch if you wanted." 

"But, come on, you have to have a name!" Blond guy protests. "Everybody has a name." 

"I am not a person. I am a weapon, and I have been given my name. I am the Asset." 

"Ooooookay," the armored dude says, "we've got a hefty case of brainwashing on our hands. Why, exactly, did you decide you wanted to take the basket case  _here,_ Rogers?" 

Rogers? Steve Rogers, then. For some strange reason, the name makes her feel nauseated. 

"I've already told you," Rogers says, exasperated. "She's our friend."

"You knew her..." armor guy pretends to count on his fingers, "75 years ago? I'm not exactly an expert on these things, but I think friendships go a little stale after that long." 

Finally, her other target speaks. "Would you rather we had let her roam free? There's no telling what kind of havoc she could've wrought." 

"I'd guess about as much havoc as  _you_ wrought on my tower!" 

Her target growls, starting towards him, but Rogers puts a hand on his shoulder. "Bucky, stop." 

Natasha does the same to Armor Man, but she barely touches him. The other girl does nothing, just turns to look at her. The brown-haired girl's eyes flash red, and the Asset feels uncomfortable probing in her mind. She panics again, lashing out with her powers-

Nothing happens. 

She looks down at her hands, frowning when she sees a glowing silver band around her wrist. They're containing her powers. Smart. 

"Wanda?" Rogers asks. "What's wrong?" 

When she looks up again, the red-eyed girl's face is pale. She staggers back a bit, clutching her head. "It- it hurts," she mumbles in a voice with a Russian-sounding accent. It's not quite Russian, but close, and it feels comforting. "Her mind- so much pain. I can't even get past the first layer." 

Interesting. A telepath. 

Rogers turns to look at her again. He starts towards her; she keeps still, knowing any movement by her could be interpreted as fear. She does not want them to think she fears them, even though the knowledge she'll be tortured most likely within the hour is terrifying.

"Y/n," he says softly. "I thought you were long dead." 

She stares at him blankly, even as her mind tries to pull up an image of him- small and weak and skinny, voice higher-pitched, but still the same man. The effort hurts almost as much as the scrambler and she clenches her teeth, willing the tears pooling in her eyes to go away. 

"Whatever information you're trying to get out of me, you will not get from me," she says finally once she's recovered. 

"I wouldn't be too sure about that, Princess," Armor Guy says, glaring at her. "If you hurt even one pane of glass in my tower, there will be hell to pay." 

She tries not to shudder, to think about what he might do to her, but reassures herself that nothing this band of soldiers can do, even as high-powered as they are, will ever come close to how her masters conditioned her. 

"Don't pay attention to Stark," Rogers tells her. "He's all hot-air. We won't torture you here."

He's a pretty convincing liar, she decides after looking for tells and finding none. But she's been trained for decades; she's been tortured by more people than this soldier has probably killed. If they simply wanted to get rid of her, they would've done that. But she's still alive, which implies they want her for something. The only reason people like these would want her alive is for information.

She doesn't respond, simply looks around, evaluating everyone. 

"Y/n-" he reaches to touch her arm and she jerks, using her only available weapon and biting him as hard as she can. Fortunately for him, her teeth land on the main part of his hand, not his finger- she's severed fingers before, and she doubts he'd have taken it kindly if she had done it to him. 

Even as it is, he cries out in surprise and jumps backwards, staring first at the bite-mark and then at her. Natasha begins to laugh. "First thing they teach you when handling high-risk targets-"

"Stay out of range of all potential weapons," the Asset finishes in tandem with Natasha, "including teeth." 

Natasha grins at her, and the Asset gets the feeling that they would've been friends if things had only worked out differently. This time, the regret she feels at being a weapon is stronger, harder to push away.

"Dammit!" Rogers growls. "That hurt!"

"Language," Stark and Natasha say together. When the Asset looks at Bucky, he looks torn between being expressionless, amused, and protective. 

"That was  _one_ time!" Rogers mutters. "One time, and you're still going on about it." 

"Ahem, Captain Rogers," the telepath interrupts, "what do you want to do with the girl?" 

Rogers turns back around and his eyes lock with the Asset's. "I kinda wanna hit you back for that, but I'm not really into beating up defenseless people." 

She wants to open her mouth, protest that she  _isn't_ defenseless, thank you very much, but she can't because he's right. Her limbs are secured by manacles she knows she'll never be able to get out of on her own, especially without her powers. The bracelet containing them looks to be solid steel, with no link or line showing how it's taken on and off. Even if she could get her teeth to them, there's no way she'd be able to get them off. 

"If you're trying to intimidate or insult me, you're going to have to try harder," she deadpans. 

Rogers blinks, looking thrown. "What? No, I wasn't trying to insu- I'm not scary, what are you talking about?" 

She looks at him. "I said you were trying, not succeeding." 

Natasha snorts. "I like this one." 

 _"This one_ just tried to kill two of us and has powers that could take down this entire building, not even counting whatever back-up she has," Stark cuts in, glaring at her. 

The Asset fights back a dead laugh of her own. There is no back-up. Not that she'd ever tell them that. If she fails, she fails. Hydra won't even bother to retrieve her body. 

"Who are you with?" Bucky cuts in suddenly (she really wishes she knew his last name). "What organization? You're not solo." 

"How do you know?" 

There's a moment of silence. Then Bucky say slowly, "Steve and I were under ice for decades. There's no one alive that we wronged that could actually fight us, and there's no way someone would be pissed off enough at  _both_ of us that they'd, what? Tell their granddaughter, who'd train herself just to kill two men she'd never met?" 

 _Decades?_ _They've been under ice for decades?_

She thinks for a moment, doing calculations. It's blurry, her memory in tatters even over more recent things, but she  _thinks_ she's been in service to Hydra for decades now. Which means that it's possible they could know each other. It'd certainly make sense; there's no other reason for their names to feel familiar. Which means that these two men, Steve Rogers and Bucky, must have been the enemy even back then. 

Finally, she looks back at them. Meeting their eyes, she doesn't sense any hostility, which just confuses her more. Stark acts very hostile to her, and she's fairly certain she's never met him before. Her two targets, however, are supposed to be her enemies. Yet they deliberately held back when she tried to kill them and then proceeded to hook her up to an I.V. so she could heal. 

"Well, Princess? Who is it?" 

Having completely forgot about the topic of conversation while lost in her memories, she turns her gaze back to Bucky, confused. "Who is what?" 

His expression changes instantly. Not very noticeably, but she can see something oddly like sympathy- no, empathy- in his eyes. Like he knows what just happened inside her head and has had that happen to him, too. 

"Who do you work for?" Rogers repeats slowly. 

"If I don't tell you, what methods are you planning to use in order to extract that information?" she questions, wishing she had her hands free so she could idly pick at her nails. She wants to at least be able to prepare herself for what's coming.

Rogers sighs. "None. I already told you, we're not gonna torture you here." 

She calls bullshit, but doesn't respond, opting to look at her arms and the needles stuck in them. The sight makes her nauseous. She can feel pressure begin to build up in the back of her head and knows that either a flashback or panic attack is coming soon, so she looks away quickly, focusing on controlling her breathing. 

"Then how do you plan to extract the information?" she repeats, digging her nails into her palms in an effort to ground herself.

"We were planning on using Wanda if worst came to worst and we couldn't annoy you into giving up your allegiance," Natasha says. The Asset's gaze travels to the telepath. "I know, I know," the assassin continues, "that was our plan  _before_ she tried to get into your mind and was blasted backwards. Now is when we come up with a plan B." 

She personally thinks they already should've had one by now, but says nothing. 

"She doesn't talk much, does she?" Stark comments after an awkward thirty seconds or so of silence. "Cap, for someone that you said was one of your childhood besties, she seems kind of dull." 

 _Childhood besties?_ She keeps her face expressionless even as she desperately searches through her tattered mind for something resembling that. When she finds nothing, she has to keep in a howl of frustration. Why does everything have to end in confusion? Why does everything have to contradict itself? It was so much easier before this, when she questioned nothing. Now, there are new targets that claim to know her, and not just know her, be friends with her. Nothing inside her mind lines up with that, but she  _knows_ she's seen them before; she recognizes their voices, changed as they are from what her mind tells her they should sound like. 

She thinks some more, desperately grabs for something, anything that might relate to what's going on. She needs  _something_ that can ground her. She can faintly hear people talking, but it's background noise, unimportant.

Bits and pieces, mostly unintelligible, float through her brain- flickering images, pain, blood, torture. Hydra turning her into a super soldier, her decades of service to them. She suppresses a growl. She already knows that! She wants to know the rest, if there even is any more. 

She grits her teeth and delves back into her mind. Finally, finally she finds something, close enough to just barely grasp. But the pain it brings is overwhelming, as bad as the scrambler and with no preparation. 

She screams. 

Her heart-rate skyrockets and her powers flare up within the bracelet, trying to protect her from her own mind. For an instant, a single image floats in front of her- a scrawny, skinny boy in front of her, smiling shyly at her, laughing as she tells a joke- and then it's gone, leaving only the feeling of something lost. 

A tear slides down her cheek, and she realizes faintly that she's stopped screaming. 

She looks around, head throbbing. She'd never had anything like that happen before; she never wants it to happen again. 

"Great," Stark says. "This one's even worse than Cyborg-sicle." 


	2. Chapter 2

Okay, so first things first. 

One: Steve's crush from over 70 years ago is still alive.

Two: Said crush just tried to kill both of them.

Three: Said crush almost succeeded and is apparently both a super soldier and has powers. 

Four: she just tried to escape and fell from a height of about sixty feet. 

Bucky stares dumbly at the assassin's body for a period of about .5 seconds. He regains himself about .3 seconds after Steve does, who immediately freaks out and scrambles towards her body. "Bucky, come help! We need to get her back the the tower before she wakes up!" 

He bites back a sarcastic remark and bends down, experimentally lifting her. "God, she's light," he mutters to no one in particular. "She must be nothing but skin and bone." 

Steve half-snorts and replies with something about Bucky's enhanced strength and the comparative weight of every other Avenger, most of whom are men. Bucky rolls his eyes and hoists the unconscious woman over one shoulder, then winces, only partially because of the broken rib courtesy of said unconscious person on his shoulder. "This probably isn't going to look good if I go walking down the street with a body on my shoulder." 

Steve gives him a deadpan look, eyes drifting to the left as he thinks for a moment. "It's too risky to ask for a copter in the middle of a city. We don't really have any choice. I'll just have to flash my Captain America badge, I guess," he laughs, the sound a bit strained. Bucky nods, expressionless, and starts walking, blending in as best he can with a freaking body on his shoulder (thank God that whole fiasco took place in some deserted alleyway or the cops would already be on them); Steve walks as close to him as is publicly acceptable, probably hoping that any police officer that sees the body will instantly discredit it if he sees the head of the Avengers there, or at least be too intimidated to say anything. 

It takes only about twenty harrowing minutes for them to get back to Avengers Tower. Once there, they hastily ascend the stairs, unwilling to wait for an elevator, and then proceed to burst into the main room without ceremony. 

"What the fuck?" are Tony's first words. Bucky fights the urge to roll his eyes; he's never really liked Tony much. After all, it was because of him that he was forced into a mental facility for a month before Steve finally managed to retrieve him, something that neither of the super soldiers appreciated at all. 

"The correct word is  _who,"_ Bucky bites, unceremoniously dumping the body on the couch. "She tried to kill us." 

Silence.

"And...you didn't kill her back?" Natasha asks slowly, looking down at the unconscious assassin. 

Steve glares. "Like hell I'd kill her! She's my-" he pauses, looking at Bucky, "my...uh..."

"What he's  _trying_ to say," Bucky sighs, "is she's the girl he was in love with back in the 40s." 

More silence.

"Um...come again?" Tony asks. "Are you saying  _another_ one of you guys managed to make it from that goddamn time period?" 

"Apparently," Steve says, looking torn between uncertain happiness and pain. "But, obviously, she's not on our side. I think she's from Hydra."

"Which would mean she was brainwashed, most likely," Natasha says thoughtfully, studying the girl. 

Steve nods. "Exactly. We just don't know the extent of said brainwashing yet."

"I might be able to help with that."

Bucky jerks, startled, and spins around to look at Wanda so quickly he almost gets whiplash. "Apologies, Sergeant Barnes. I overheard what you were talking about and thought I could lend my assistance. Is she injured?" 

Steve grimaces. "She fell from sixty feet in the air. I'd say yes." 

"How did she survive?" Natasha questions, raising an eyebrow. 

"We think she's a super soldier, as well. And she also has powers." 

"What kind?" Tony asks, suddenly looking way too interested. 

"None of your business!" Steve half-snarls. Bucky sighs and puts a hand on his friend's shoulder, stopping him from what might have become a full-on fight. "Calm down," he mutters. "This isn't the same girl you were in love with all those years ago." 

"You don't know that," he protests quietly. "We've barely spent an hour with her so far."

"Yeah, an hour in which she tried to kill us and managed to beat us up pretty good despite being outnumbered! She broke one of my ribs, Steve; she is  _not_ the same person she was before. None of us are." 

Steve looks down, not responding. 

"As I was saying," Tony says pointedly after a moment, "it very much  _is_ my business since this is my fucking tower and I want to know how much of a danger she is and what precautions to take." 

Bucky waits a moment, and when Steve stays where he is, memorizing the floor tiles, he grudgingly replies, "She seems to have control over the air. She almost suffocated us several times and managed to jump from a building and land unharmed. She also seems to be able to fly." 

The genius stays silent for a moment. "Okay, get her to the med-bay. Make sure she gets a crap-load of sedatives until I can figure out how to restrain her powers. It'd also be a good idea t-"

"We know, Tony," Natasha interrupts, pretending not to see Steve's grateful look, "we'll attend to her as necessary. Now go. If she really is a super soldier, our sedatives won't be able to knock her out for too much longer, so you need to hurry." 

Tony opens his mouth but Natasha sends him a death glare. He sighs, turns on his heel, and half-runs out of the room, the proverbial dog with his tail between his legs. 

"Okay," Natasha says, not wasting a second, "Let's get her in there."

 

* * *

 

It takes about three hours for Tony to come up with the right thing to dampen the girl's powers- and even then, he says, he won't know for sure until she actually tries to kill them. Not exactly encouraging, but Bucky does admit it's better than nothing.

Despite Steve's protests, they'd managed to chain her down to the bed and then work the power-dampening bracelet onto her arm. Now all that's left to be done is wait. 

"How much longer will the sedatives last?" Steve asks the doctor a little more forcefully than necessary. Bucky keeps in a groan. Normally, he'd say something to his best friend about how he really needs to chill out, but he doesn't actually know if his words would have any effect on him. In all honesty, Bucky has never seen Steve this irate since before the war and the serum, when he'd seen a bunch of men bullying the very same girl now lying unconscious in front of them.

"It's hard to tell with you super soldiers," she responds hesitantly. "She could wake up in a few hours or a few minutes. It's impossible to tell for sure." 

"So you've confirmed she is a super soldier?" Natasha asks, arms crossed. The doctor nods. 

"After running tests on both Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes, here, and isolating what makes them different from the rest of humanity, I was able to compare and contrast her DNA, heart rate, and cellular regeneration and such to theirs. All three of them have an extremely low metabolism, heart rate, and respiratory system. The muscle and bone density and hardness of all three is much better than is seen even in an Olympic athlete, although hers is much lower than theirs. For some reason, it seems as though the serum didn't work on her as well as it did with those two." 

"Barnes said she has powers," Tony puts in. "Is it possible that they might've reduced the effects of the serum?"

The doctor shrugs. "It's possible, likely even, but there's nothing we know for certain. It's also possible that there was a malfunction in the machine or the serum used in the process was faulty, and they didn't have the materials to put her through the process again. All we know for certain is that she's a super soldier, albeit a bit weaker than the two we have here, and that she has some kind of powers. If she really is Hydra trained and brainwashed, that makes her very dangerous. I'd advise extreme caution in dealing with her." 

Steve glares and opens his mouth to make a cutting retort. Bucky kicks him. "Alright, thank you ma'am," Steve edits quickly, shooting Bucky an annoyed look that the dark-haired man is all too eager to mirror.  _Calm down,_ Bucky mouths.

Steve's shoulders drop fractionally and he sighs. _I_ _'ll try._ _No promises,_ he mouths back. 

There's several minutes of awkward silence. Tony finally starts out the door, telling Wanda to notify him when the assassin woke up, but just as he makes to shut the door behind him, the steady beeping of the monitor begins to pick up and the girl stirs. 

Tony instantly steps back into the room, holding out his hand for his armor. "I really hope that bracelet works." 

"I still think the handcuffs were unnecessary," Steve mutters, ignoring Bucky's sigh. 

She stirs sleepily, tugging against the manacles that bind her as if to get up out of bed. When the movement is cut short, her eyes snap open, almost frantically. Her heart rate spikes, as does her adrenaline, and Bucky can hear her muttering something in Russian. It's hard to decipher, but he can barely make out a bunch of frantic no's and apologies, mingled with promises that she can do better next time. That she can bring the target in, just please, please, don't-

The last word is cut short, but Bucky thinks she was about to say something about a machine. 

"This could get ugly," Tony says, pointedly ignoring Bucky's sarcastic  _you think?_

As if she recognizes Bucky's voice, her heart rate suddenly drops and her eyes finally seem to focus. She takes a slow, calculated evaluation of the room and its occupants. Bucky expects her to maybe say something to Bucky or Steve or perhaps inquire where she is, but instead, the first thing that comes out of her mouth is, "Natasha Romanoff. I've heard quite a lot about you." 

Natasha blinks, looking surprised. "I can't say the same about you, I'm afraid. We don't even know your name."

Steve gives her a look. "Nat, I've  _told_ you, it's-" Natasha gives him a single look and he shuts up. Bucky envies her ability to do that; if Nat had a super power, instantly silencing people would be it. 

"I do not possess a name," the girl says coolly. Bucky stares at her, appalled. How could Hydra have brainwashed her so successfully that she forgot her own  _identity?_ He didn't even know that was possible. "I am the Asset, or if you prefer, the Winter Assassin. It does not matter what you wish to call me; you could even call me bitch if you wanted." 

Tony looks like he'd seriously like to take her up on that offer, but before he can say anything, Steve breaks in. "But, come on, you have to have a name! Everybody has a name."

Bucky can  _sense_ the annoyed huff she chooses not to vocalize. "I am not a person. I am a weapon, and I have been given my name. I am the Asset."

The soldier blinks."Ooooookay," Tony says, echoing Bucky's thoughts, "we've got a hefty case of brainwashing on our hands. Why, exactly, did you decide you wanted to take the basket case  _here,_ Rogers?" 

"I've already told you," Steve says, somehow still managing to sound annoyed. "She's our friend." 

Tony exchanges a glance with Natasha, who looks equally skeptical. "You knew her...75 years ago? I'm not exactly an expert on these things, but I think friendships go a little stale after that long." 

Bucky sighs. It's not  _about_  friendship, doesn't he get it? "Would you rather we had let her roam free? There's no telling what kind of havoc she could've wrought." 

"I'd guess about as much havoc as  _you_ wrought on my tower!" Tony retorts hotly. 

The super soldier growls, seriously tempted to punch the annoying genius's face in, but Steve puts a hand on his shoulder, pulling him back. "Bucky, stop." 

He relents, turning his gaze back to the Asset- he can't call her Y/n, that's simply not who she is anymore. As he does so, Wanda staggers backwards in the corner of his eyes. He instantly turns to look, taking his gaze off the assassin. 

"Wanda?" Steve asks, concerned. "What's wrong?" the Sokovian girl's face is ash-white and she clutches her head, wincing. "It- it hurts," she manages, eyes flickering between red and brown. "Her mind- so much pain. I can't even get past the first layer." 

Well, if that didn't scream _brainwashed,_ then Bucky's not sure what would. Steve seems to be thinking the same thing. He starts towards the Asset again, getting closer to her than any of them had yet dared. 

"Y/n," he says softly, almost gently, "I thought you were long dead." She doesn't respond, eyes unfocused as if she's staring right through him. There's a long silence, and finally her eyes refocus again, along with her jaw clenching and what Bucky thinks could be the beginning of tears in her eyes. 

"Whatever information you're trying to get out of me, you will not get from me," she says steadily, blinking a few too many times for it to be considered normal. 

Tony, of course, either doesn't see what Bucky does or just doesn't care, because he decides to resort to threats. "I wouldn't be too sure about that, Princess. If you hurt even one pane of glass in my tower, there will be hell to pay." 

She doesn't meet the genius's eyes, choosing instead to look down. Bucky thinks he might see her shudder, but he's not sure. The heart monitor blips once, but it's slight enough he barely notices it.  

Apparently Steve sees the same thing, because he says, still in that same soft voice, "Don't pay attention to Stark. He's all hot air; we won't torture you here."

She doesn't respond. Despite himself, Bucky begins to sympathize with her. He remembers, back in those first days when Steve found him and brought him to Avengers tower, he barely spoke at all. Although Hydra had never used him to assassinate people, they had trained him, and their methods of training were brutal at best. That, combined with the PTSD he'd gotten from the war, meant he was perpetually haunted for months on end. It'd taken more than a year for him to even begin to get back to the person he was before the war, and he'd accepted months ago that he'd never be exactly the same. 

"Y/n-" Steve tries again, reaching out to touch her. Then she does something Bucky never would have expected.

She bites him. 

Torn between surprise, amusement, and anger, he can only watch as Steve yelps and Natasha starts laughing.

"Dammit! That hurt!" he cries. 

"Language," Tony and Nat say at the same time. Bucky's definitely leaning more on amusement now. 

"That was _one_ time," Steve fumes, still looking at his hand that is, Bucky knows, probably already beginning to heal. "One time, and you're still going on about it." 

Wanda clears her throat, breaking up Steve's little tantrum. "Captain Rogers, what do you want to do with the girl?"

He turns, not to the telepath, but to the Asset. "I kinda wanna hit you back for that, but I'm not really into beating up defenseless people," he tells her.

"If you're trying to intimidate or insult me, you're going to have to try harder," is all she says, still expressionless but Bucky thinks she might look slightly annoyed now.

Steve gapes at her. "What? No, I wasn't trying to insu- I'm not scary, what are you talking about?"

She just looks at him. "I said you were trying, not succeeding." 

Bucky has to fight back a snort.

Natasha grins approvingly. "I like this one."

 _"This one_ just tried to kill two of us and has powers that could take down this entire building, not even counting whatever backup she has," Tony grumbles, glaring at her, again not seeming to notice or care about the way the Asset folds in on herself at his words. Bucky has to give it him; Tony is quite the killjoy.

In a flash, as he looks back at the Asset, he understands, knowing all too well Hydra's methods. There _is_  no backup. If she can't finish the job, then she doesn't, in Hydra's eyes, deserve to come back for the next one. He doubts they'd even take the trouble to retrieve her body. 

That is, if she really was trained by Hydra. 

"Who are you with?" he asks suddenly. "What organization? You're not solo." 

"How do you know?" she retorts.

He looks at her for a moment, then says slowly, "Steve and I were under ice for decades. There's no one alive that we wronged that could actually fight us, and there's no way someone would be pissed off enough at  _both_ of us that they'd, what?" he scoffs. "Tell their granddaughter, who'd train herself just to kill two men she'd never met?"

Her eyes unfocus again; Tony heaves an exasperated sigh. "Really? _Again?_ How many times is she going to do that in the span of one hour?"

"Shut up, Tony," Bucky snaps. "She's trying to piece together her memories. Hydra- if it really is Hydra- did a number on her brain." What he decides not to say out loud, especially with Steve there, is that he doesn't know if she'll ever be able to get anything back. To not even be able to remember her own _name,_ or her best friend from childhood...that was such a large part of her, that Bucky doesn't know if she has anything else inside her. 

Finally, after several impatient noises Tony's part and more than a few attempts to bring her back to the present, she looks back up at them, eyes hard and searching. 

"Well, Princess?" Bucky breaks the silence. "Who is it?" 

For the first time, he gets a genuine show of emotion; confusion. "Who is what?" 

He fights back the sympathy trying to show itself.

"Who do you work for?" Steve asks slowly, not managing to hide his sympathy quite so well. 

"If I don't tell you, what methods are you planning to use in order to extract that information?"

Bucky rolls his eyes. _Seriously?_

"None," Steve says stoically. "I already told you, we're not gonna torture you here." 

"Then how do you plan to extract the information?"

It's Natasha who responds this time, as cool and collected as ever. "We were planning on using Wanda if worst came to worst and we couldn't annoy you into giving up your allegiance." 

The Asset casts a doubtful look at the telepath. 

"I know, I know, that was our plan  _before_ she tried to get into your mind and was blasted backwards. Now is when we come up with a plan B." 

Surprise, surprise- the Asset doesn't respond. 

"She doesn't talk much, does she?" Tony comments after yet another long silence. Bucky wonders if she's purposely trying to make it awkward in order for them to want to leave her alone, and decides it might actually not be such a bad idea. Maybe he should try it one day to get out of one of Steve's endless conversations about Bucky's nonexistent love life. "Cap, for someone that you said was one of your childhood besties, she seems kind of dull." 

"Do you  _have_ to pick a fight with me every couple minutes?" Steve asks, finally seeming to have burned out of annoyance and going for tired instead. 

"Hey, I'm not the one who's naturally annoying!" Tony defends. 

They all look at him for a long, long moment. 

"...okay, maybe I am," he relents. "But wait, what the hell's going on with little Miss Assassin over there?" 

Bucky follows his gaze. The Asset's knuckles are white against the bed and the heart monitor is skyrocketing, her eyes closed and jaw clenched in what can only be agonizing pain. 

Then, just as Steve is starting towards her, probably to unlock her restraints, she screams. 

It's long and harsh and broken, the scream of someone in pain unimaginable. For a moment, the air in front of her seems to ripple, but the bracelet flashes bright white and it stops. A single tear falls down her cheek. 

She finally opens her eyes, chest heaving, that same haunted look in her eyes Bucky's seen in the mirror so many times. 

"Great," Tony says, with no small amount of sarcasm. "This one's even worse than Cyborg-sicle." 

 

* * *

 

"Steve," Bucky starts, hours later. They're sitting in Steve's room, on his bed. It's dark outside now, and the room echoes that darkness because Steve refused to turn on lights, meaning that the only illumination they have is from the pale moon and the crack under his door.

"Please don't tell me you're going to say 'I told you so'," Steve mumbles. "I already know. You were right. I was wrong. There's nothing left of- of that girl anymore."

Bucky places a consoling hand on his best friend's shoulder. "Hey, don't give up yet. You didn't think I was ever gonna recover, either, right?" 

"No," Steve admits, "But that was different. You weren't nearly as bad as she is. I mean, come on, she tried to  _kill_ us!" 

That's one point Bucky can't dispute. But he continues anyway. "Still, Stevie, you never know. She might just turn around and surprise you one day." when Steve doesn't respond, he sighs and keeps going. "I'm not gonna lie, this won't be easy. This will be fucking hard and it's gonna take months, years maybe, but eventually, if you keep at it, she might be able to live a good life. Like she was supposed to." 

Bucky didn't really know her personally; he knew her more by what Steve said about her than what he actually deduced himself, but he did know enough about her to know she was a good person. Just like they'd all been before that Godawful war. 

"I know that," his friend says quietly, "but..." he trails off and Bucky waits patiently. It's never a good idea to push Steve before he's ready. "To be honest, I don't even know if I still like her."

Bucky opens his mouth, not sure what he's going to say; Steve, thank God, cuts him off. "It's just...it's been years, you know? Decades. I'm not the person I was all those years ago, and she's obviously not, either. And after all I've been through and all she's been through and Peggy and Sharon, I..." 

He squeezes Steve's shoulder. "Stevie, it's okay. It can take a really long time to know exactly what you're feeling, and for who, and that's okay. You've got time. Hell, probably too much time. She's not going anywhere anytime soon, and neither is Sharon."

Steve smiles gratefully, but it's tinged with sadness. "Everything's changed, Buck," he says wistfully. "Don't you ever wish we could go back then, never have had any of this shit happen? The people here are great and all, but sometimes I think I'd much rather have never met them if it means I wouldn't have had to go through everything I had to for them, both back in the 40s and in this time period." 

Bucky smiles back, eyes just as sad as his friend's. "All the time, Steve," he answers quietly. "Sometimes I look around and pray to God that this was all a nightmare, but it never goes away. Not all of it's bad, of course, but the black overshadows the white and I'm sick of it. I just want to go home, Stevie. I want to go home." 

Wordlessly, the blond opens his arms, hugging Bucky with all his strength. The older man tightens his arms, hugging Steve back just as hard. 

"Me too," Steve finally whispers into the deathly silence, voice cracking. "Me too." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, so I'm blaming the fever I currently have for any typos and the possibly overemotional scene I have at the end here. Once I'm better, I'm planning on coming back in an editing it, mostly to get it to flow better, but in the mean time I hope ya'll can be content with this.  
> By the way, if you want to comment, that'd be great. Even if you don't know what to say, it'd still be cool to hear from you, even if all it is is, like, a "Fuck you, you suck" or something. I mean, obviously I'd spend like the next five days crying, but at least I'd have a comment to read lol


	3. Real or Not Real?

She dreams that night. 

Usually, she was given pills to take; pills that would stop her from having dreams. Her masters didn't want her crippled by PTSD or remembering something about her past that was unnecessary, that would dull that crucial edge of their weapon. 

For the first time, unable to take the meds, she dreams. 

It's just as horrible as she was expecting. 

 

_The faces of every person she's killed float past her eyes. She desperately fights the guilt that threatens to overcome her at each one (she's a weapon, weapons don't feel emotion, weapons don't feel guilt). Machines surround her; she's lost in an ocean of ice and fire and agony that nearly rips her apart._

_Another face passes in front of her, this one alive, moving, not dead like the others. She recognizes him instantly. Her master._

_"You failed, Soldier. You will be punished." he says coldly. She struggles against the restraints, desperately begging him in every language she knows not to put her back there, not to put her in the blender._

_He turns to the workers around him. "Strap her down."_

 

_The scene changes._

 

_Now, she's in a house. It's vaguely familiar and she panics because this must be one of her target's homes; she's about to relive another death, another murder._

_She shouldn't care this much. It's just a life. She's a weapon; weapons don't feel, don't whine or angst or complain about the lives they've ripped apart. But yet, she does. Maybe that makes her an unfit weapon, a sham. She doesn't know._

_She walks in against her will, her body moving of its own accord. A small, scrawny man smiles up at her. "Hey, Y/N. Food's almost ready, wanna help?"_

_She's right in one thing; it is the home of one of her targets. Just not one that she's killed- yet._

_She feels herself smile back. "Are you kidding? Of course; I'd love to! What kind of person do you think I am, Steve?"_

_The man- Steve, she corrects herself, Steve Rogers, her target- smirks and holds up his hands in surrender. "Jeez, I was just asking. No need to get all huffy on me, ma'am." he playfully bops her nose as she gets closer._

_She instantly reacts, intending to grab him by his overly scrawny neck (seriously, that super soldier serum did a hell of a lot for his physique, assuming that really_ is _the same_   _Steve) and strangle him, but her arms aren't obeying her; instead, she finds herself laughing, flicking his nose in retribution as she passes by him, entering the kitchen. "You idiot," she murmurs affectionately, smile widening when he rolls his eyes. "So what do I need t-"_

_"SURPRISE!" About five different people leap out in front of her, scaring her half to death._

_"What the FU-"_

_"Happy birthday, Y/N," Steve says into her ear, laughing now. "You didn't want us to throw you a birthday party, so I decided to anyway."_

_"You_ idiot,"  _she repeats, this time with just as much affection, badly hidden behind annoyance. "You contrary_ idiot,  _Steve."_

_The others gather round her, showering her with confetti and birthday wishes, pushing her over to where a cake stands. A cake._

_"Steve," she says again, voice softer, "you didn't-"_

_"Well," he says, blushing a bit, "We all know how bad my cooking skills are, so I um, I bought it."_

_Because, she reflects dryly, obviously not very well-off Steve totally had the money to waste on frivolous things like that. She has no idea why her other self seems so enamored with him; he's careless and wasteful with his money for some_ girl  _that's pretty much worthless. Maybe not back then- if this really is a memory- but certainly now._

_Other Her is tearing up just a bit, saying overly cheesy things like 'you didn't have to' and 'Oh Steve' and really, can she get any more pathetic? Steve has a strand of her hair around his fingers, eyes deep and sincere, and both versions of her stiffen at the look on his face._

_Oh_ shit,  _Present Her thinks. Other Her's thoughts are a confused jumble she doesn't even want to try to figure out._

_"I wanted to," he says softly, smiling at her, before looking down, cheeks turning red. "And...I've been meaning to tell you something."_

_Wild hope blooms up in Other Her's chest. "Yes?"_

_"I just want to tell you that- that I..." he gulps. "I'm- I'm sweet on you."_

 

_The scene changes again._

 

_When she looks down, her hands are sticky and red._

_She goes to cover her mouth in horror, but stops. Both because she doesn't want to get blood on her face, and because- because-_

_Because of the body on the floor._

_"No," she finds herself whispering, "No, no, no, I didn't mean to, I_ swear  _it was an accident I just-"_

_"It's your fault."_

_She turns around. It's...Bucky?_

_"I can't believe you would kill your own father."_

_"It was- it was an accident!" she sobs out, blood everywhere; on her hands, on her clothes, on the floor. "Bucky, please believe me, I would never hurt him, no matter how much he neglected me. It was an_ accident!" 

_"Yeah," he scoffs, eyes cold, "I'll have you tell that to the police."_

_"Bucky," she pleads,_ "Please,  _please, you have to believe me! Ask Steve, he knows I would nev-"_

_"Steve?" Bucky scoffs. "Oh, I've no doubt he'd say you're innocent. He's head over heels for you; of course he can't see that you're a cold, frigid_ bitch  _only interested in yourself." He grabs her roughly and pulls her to her feet. She doesn't struggle, not wanting to hurt him- to_ kill  _him- like she did to her father. She doesn't know what it was that set it off, but she never, ever wants it to happen again._

 

_The scene changes._

 

_She sits in front of another body._

_Steve's._

_She's screaming, and the wild panic of her dream begins to affect her until she begins to feel the same terror as Other Her- as the girl who actually seems to care for Steve. She wildly feels for a pulse, but already knows she won't find one. Then, as she finally lifts her head from his dead body, her screams catch in her throat._

_No. No. No._

_Bodies as far as she can see- piled on top of each other, bleeding, mangled, broken. Even though she doesn't know everyone's name, she recognizes their faces. Each and every one of them._

_Bucky. Her father. Her friends, family. Her targets, from the first to the last. All of Hydra. Every Avenger she's met so far._

_And she just killed all of them._

 

She wakes with a scream on her lips and a heartbeat so fast she can feel it thudding wildly in her chest, a wild beast trying to escape. 

_Don't scream don't scream don't scream don't scream._

With an effort that feels as monumental as picking up a skyscraper, she swallows it down, buries it within her. 

What the hell just happened? 

She has no idea about anything she just dreamed- well, she knows very well what that first dream was. And obviously the last one was simply a figment of her imagination. But the others...are they real? Was that actually the same Steve that she's been assigned to kill? Did he really have a crush on her, back in the 40s? Did she really kill her father and did Bucky really turn her over to the police? How much is fact and how much is fiction? 

She wishes she knew. She wishes her brain wasn't a fucking piece of Swiss cheese. Anything her brain dreams up- or digs up from the startlingly deep depths of her brain- could be true or not true, real or unreal. She simply doesn't know. And she doesn't know of a single person alive that she can trust to tell her what's real. She knows she could ask Steve or Bucky, of course, but what motive would they have for telling her the truth? Why would Steve, her enemy, tell her that he had a crush on her? Why would Bucky willingly tell his enemy he turned her over to the police for murder? If that really was true, it'd definitely give her still more reason to kill him. 

Her heartbeat seems to be slowing down, thank God. The monitor- that loud, hateful thing- echoes the pulse inside her chest, telling any passerbys that their prisoner is awake and still slightly panicked. She hopes to God that there's no one out there, but highly doubts it. There's no way there wouldn't be at least one person keeping an eye on her at all times. 

With that thought in mind, she begins the breathing exercises she was taught long ago by her masters. There's no way she'll give her enemies the satisfaction of seeing her scared. 

 

* * *

 

It's probably about six a.m. when the first Avenger shows their face; at least, that's what she's assuming. It's not like she's formally met any of them, though, so she could be wrong.

"So you're the nut-job everyone's been talking about," is the guy's greeting to her.  

She stares at him for a long moment. What is it with the Avengers and their nonexistent sense of tact? 

"They said you didn't talk much, too. Guess they got that right." 

She keeps staring. In her experience, if you remain silent long enough, the other person will get uncomfortable and want to fill the silence. 

She's not wrong. 

"Nothing? Really? Are you mute or something?" 

Silence. 

He heaves an exasperated sigh. "Natasha likes doing that, too.  _Fine,_ you win. I'm Clint Barton. Hawkeye. You know, the archer guy that continually saves everyone's asses." 

She gets a feeling this is where she introduces herself back, but remains silent. 

"Damn, still? You've got self-control, sweet-cheeks."

"Don't call me that." 

He grins triumphantly and she fights the urge to groan. "Yes! She speaks!"

She glares. 

"Aw, come on. Don't be such a sour puss. I'm a nice guy!" 

There's a silver streak and a blond guy pops in, right in front of her. "'Nice guy'?" the blond mocks in an accent closely resembling the telepath's. "Aren't you getting a bit old for flirting, old man?"

"Hey, I never said I was flirting!" Barton says defensively, "just trying to get her to talk! Maybe she'll open up to an  _old_ guy easier than to one of you  _kids."_

"Why don't we leave it up to the lady?" Blond guy asks, smirking at her. "Which do you prefer?" 

"Neither," she says shortly, wishing she had never been put on this mission. Seriously, all she'd wanted to do was kill two people and now she's being subjected to two men arguing about what's more attractive to her. For all Steve had said about not torturing her, he's not making good on it. 

Barton clutches his heart dramatically. "Ouch, that's cold," he whines, "So cold. I'm freezing right now as we speak." 

She rolls her eyes. 

There's another flash of silver and suddenly someone's  _right in front of her,_ as in barely inches away from her face. She goes to headbutt him but he grins, moving just far enough backwards as to render her move ineffective. "Ooh, this one's trained well. She'd make a good addition to our team, don't you think?" 

"I really wished you'd been just a bit quicker," Barton tells her, ignoring the runner dude's question. "I really would've liked to see that quick little bastard with a bloody nose."

Now, it's the other man who clutches a hand over his heart. "You wound me, Маленькая птица. And here I thought I meant something to you!" 

If the Asset had had her hands free, she would've facepalmed about then. 

_"Маленькая птица?"_ Barton echoes, annoyed, pronouncing the Russian fairly badly. "Really? Out of all the nicknames you could've picked, you chose that one? That's like calling you...I don't know, but something weird." 

The blond shrugs, smirking  ~~and okay she'll admit it's a pretty attractive smirk.~~ "I thought it would fit you well, seeing as you are so- short." 

"First you question my ability to pick up the ladies, then you call me old, and  _now_ you're gonna call me short?" Barton cries, looking unduly outraged. "Hydra certainly picked well, Pietro." 

The moment he says those last words, he freezes. Pietro freezes, too. Both look at her.

When the full impact of Barton's words hit her, she freezes, too. 

"Hydra?" she asks slowly. "You were trained by Hydra?" she doesn't add  _too,_ because her enemies don't quite know that yet and she'd like to keep them guessing. In fact, just showing she has knowledge about Hydra is probably revealing too much. But she'll take the risk in order to not be kept guessing about exactly who Pietro is; she is fairly certain that she would've heard her masters talking about a new super soldier, especially one that had powers like he does, but it's possible he was a top secret weapon. 

Maybe they sent him to infiltrate the Avengers with her, to finish the rest of them off. If that's true, she'd certainly welcome the assistance. 

Pietro looks down. "Da," he says, bringing her back to the present. "Me and my little sister. It's a long story, but we were their secret weapons. When we realized that their- their-" he seems to search for the word, "motives did not match ours, we decided to defect to these old people." 

"If we're so old, why'd you do it in the first place?" Barton asks, crossing his arms. 

"Because you need help, in case you fall and can't get up," Pietro deadpans.

Despite herself, she starts laughing. Barton looks  _pissed_ and starts spouting extremely badly pronounced insults in Russian, which makes her laugh even harder, to the point where she really wishes her hands were free so she could muffle her laughter a bit. 

At the thought of the handcuffs, she abruptly stops laughing. 

The two men look over at her, suspicious at her sudden silence. She realizes she's probably expected to say something about now, so she explains, "After a while, your awful Russian accent was just too bad to ignore." 

Barton mimes a dagger in his chest. "Wow, just when I thought she couldn't get any worse," he complains to Pietro. She debates telling him she's right there and can, if he wishes, be a  _whole_ lot worse, but decides not to. She  _can_ be nice when the situation calls for it, after all. "First she stabs me, and now she's twisting the knife in my  _heart,_ Pietro. My  _heart!"_

Pietro turns to look at her, obviously trying to hide a smile. "You should be careful. Wouldn't want to give the old man a heart attack, you know." 

She thinks she very much  _would,_ seeing as his death would simply make it easier to get to her targets, but shrugs and says nothing. 

"You know, Pietro," says a new voice, "If  _he's_ old, what does that make me? Because I'm pretty sure I'd be a fossil." She turns, suppressing a groan. Steve Rogers. Precisely the man she  _really_ didn't want to see. 

"Well," Pietro says slowly, considering, "weren't you frozen under ice for decades? That would, indeed, make you a...fossil." he makes a slight face at the word, as if he dislikes how it sounds. 

Rogers laughs. "I guess it would." Then he turns to the Asset. "How are you doing?" 

She remains silent. It's the old good cop, bad cop routine. Stark will probably come in later and threaten to torture her, maybe actually do the deed. She's sure Rogers isn't actually averse to it, just pretends to be. 

"Aw, come on, Cap!" Clint complains. "We actually had her talking before you came in and ruined it all!" She gives him a skeptic look. Talking isn't exactly what she'd call it. 

"I am not sure  _talking_ is what she was doing, but she was...more vocal," Pietro says, throwing a wink her way. 

Seriously? Flirting with the assassin who tried to murder two of your teammates? Honestly, she's seriously starting to think Pietro's still Hydra. 

"Dude, what happened to standards? Don't flirt with the assassins, please," Stark reproves as he walks in, red armor noticeably absent. 

"I have standards, they are just very low." 

Ouch. 

Clint bursts out laughing. "And here I thought little miss Tempest here was the meany." 

_Meany?_ What is he, five? 

Stark throws him an unimpressed look, then clears his throat. "Okay, settle down. I got myself out of bed three hours earlier than I normally do for this, so it better be good." he looks at the Asset. "I want you to tell me everything."

She looks at him incredulously. He seriously thinks that's gonna work? "Sorry, Metal Man, you'll have to try better than that." 

The genius grins, and she decides she very much dislikes it. "Oh, I am. What if I offer you your memories? Every. Single. One." 

Everything seems to have gone still. 

Stark's grin widens. "So, what'll it be, Stormy?" 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mean............I said it's a Bucky/Reader fic but honestly I'm feeling legit anything right now. Steve, Clint, Bucky...just not Tony. I can't do Tony.   
> What do you think? Should I stick with Bucky? I'm probably gonna do a little Steve/Reader (definitely Past!Steve/Reader), just for the hell of it, but unless you guys tell me, it won't be the endgame ship, although they will most likely be very good friends. But I could totally feel a Clint/Reader or hell, if you REALLY want me, I could even try a Tony/Reader or Pietro/Reader (I could even alter the whole universe and throw Loki in there if you guys want lol). Just don't expect not to feel a little nauseous here and there (it's not that I don't like Tony, although he IS an annoying lil shit most of the time, I just don't feel like he's good with relationships, especially with someone as damaged as the reader is in this fic). 
> 
> So what'll it be? Stay with Bucky or try out another Avenger?


	4. Chapter 4

_She looks at him incredulously. He seriously thinks that's gonna work? "Sorry, Metal Man, you'll have to try better than that."_

_The genius grins, and she decides she very much dislikes it. "Oh, I am. What if I offer you your memories? Every. Single. One."_

_Everything seems to have gone still._

_Stark's grin widens. "So, what'll it be, Stormy?"_

 

Before she can answer, another figure appears. She allows herself to feel a certain amount of satisfaction at the sight of Bucky's slight limp and the way his hand is carefully curled around his abdomen as if to protect a hurt rib. At least  _he_ didn't leave the fight unscathed. She wishes she could say the same of Rogers. 

"What's this about restoring her memories?" Bucky questions harshly as he storms in to stand right in front of Stark. All of a sudden, the genius doesn't look quite so confident. She supposes that, if she were a normal human, she probably wouldn't, either. 

"I- uh- well, I was gonna-"

"Hook her up to the same machine you tried to hook  _me_ up to?" Bucky crosses his arms, glaring. "Not happening." 

"Damn it," Stark mutters, "I was counting on him to be asleep."

"Is that why you got up so early? To go behind both our backs and do something you _know_ we'd never agree to?" Rogers challenges now, joining in. The Asset groans inwardly. _All I wanted to do was kill a couple of people,_ she thinks mournfully.  _Now look where that's gotten me._

 _"We'd_ never agree to? Since when is this  _your_ choice?" Stark retorts heatedly.

"It's our choice since we're apparently the only ones in this entire _fucking_ _building_ with _morals!"_ Rogers roars. 

There's a minute of absolute, deadly silence. 

Then, finally, Barton speaks.

"Language." 

"Barton, I swear to God-" Rogers starts, but gets cut off by Stark.

"So, I'm gonna assume that that was a no?" 

Before either Rogers or Bucky (God, she really wishes she knew his last name; it feels way too personal to refer to him by that all the time) can respond, she speaks. "So, I'm gonna guess that I don't get any say in this? How...unfortunate for you." 

Stark whips around to face her so fast he could've gotten whiplash. "No, no, no, of course you get a say in this," he says quickly, "it's  _your_ brain, after all." 

The last sentence makes her want to laugh. She's never gotten bodily autonomy with her masters, not for a single second. It's laughable that she gets it now, in the presence of her enemies. Although she has no intention of ever giving any information away for anything, even her memories, it's definitely a novel and pleasant idea that she actually has a choice in the matter. But then again, these are her enemies. She doubts she really  _does_ have a choice in anything, but the pretense is still nice and heretofore unheard of. 

"No!" Bucky protests. "There's no way anyone is being put in that machine again. We don't even know if it will work, much less how much it might hurt her or others around her." 

Huh. For some reason, Bucky and Rogers really don't want her going into that machine. Why? She doesn't believe for a second that it's because it might hurt her, so... Why, then? Maybe they're trying to win her over to their side, to befriend her to change her loyalties? Out of the two options, that one seems more likely; too bad it won't work, though. They definitely seem to be putting a lot of effort into it. 

"Come on," Stark wheedles, "it's her body, after all, not yours; she should get the final sa-"

"NO!" Rogers yells, cutting Stark off. "She has no idea what that thing is capable of- and even more so, we don't know what  _she's_ capable of! The last thing we need is an assassin gone berserk on us!" 

She tilts her head. So it's less about her being hurt and more about the possibility she might hurt them. Maybe they think she'll somehow be able to get out of her restraints? Perhaps the machine Stark's interested in putting her in interferes with the cuff that's canceling out her powers. 

Stark crosses his arms and pouts, muttering something that sounds like "ruining all my fun, like usual". Well, she supposes she now knows for sure who the torturer of the lot is. She decides to keep on Stark's good side as much as possible; sadistic types tend to scare her probably a little more than they, in actuality, should. She goes to adjust her position on the bed but gets caught on her handcuffs. The ensuing face she makes is seen by Barton, who gives her a sympathetic look.  _"Bet you wish you could get out of here,"_ he mouths at her, jerking his head in the direction of the ongoing argument between Stark, Rogers, and Bucky. 

She's caught off guard, confused by how...friendly he's being, but decides that he must be trying out the 'make her switch loyalties' thing she'd thought Bucky and Rogers were doing a short while ago. Well, she might as well show him that there's no way that'll ever happen.  _"Definitely. All I signed up for was to kill a couple people and now look where I ended up."_ She expects discomfort, or at least wariness, but instead his eyes crinkle around the corners and he...laughs? He barely makes a sound; it's more of an amused exhale than anything, but it still kinda weirds her out. 

 _"I like you,"_ he mouths back, still grinning. Well, now she  _really_ wishes she could get out of here. She's had a  _lot_ of things happen when she's gotten taken hostage before; a guy telling her he likes her is not one of them. She ducks her head, strangely embarrassed, as she tries to think of an actual legitimate reply to that. She decides the best response is to pretend like it never happened, so she stays silent. 

Meanwhile, Rogers and Stark have gotten into a stare-off and Bucky looks like he regrets his entire life leading up to this point. She definitely sympathizes. Pietro stands a little bit to the back of the rest of them, watching with a raised eyebrow and an otherwise unreadable expression. It's impossible to tell what he thinks about Stark's idea but the Asset can't believe he'd like it, not after being with Hydra. Hell, even the IV in her arm freaks her out when she tries to move her arm, the needle digging further into her skin. 

Speaking of which...

"Would you men like to explain why, exactly, I still have a needle stuck in my arm? Surely the electrodes over my heart are sufficient for telling you my heart rate. If this is your attempt at torture, I'd like to tell you that it's annoying, yes, but highly ineffective. If you'd like, I could give you a few pointers."  _since it's not like anything they, with their limited equipment, can do will be any worse than what I've already been through._

Rogers and Stark break off from their stare-down to look at her. Rogers looks somewhere between uncomfortable, sad, and horrified  _(what Barton should've looked like,_ she thinks), and says, "The doctor's gonna take it out when she comes in. It's just really early, so she hasn't come in yet. And," he adds, "I've already told you, we're not gonna torture you here." 

Again, she can't find a tell. Rogers is a hell of a good liar to have successfully told the  _same_ lie to her, twice. That, or he's telling the truth, which is much less likely.

Unsure of how to respond, she simply uses her tried-and-true method and doesn't. Stark rolls his eyes and mutters something about torturing her himself that she really, _really_ tries not to think about. She might be well-versed in sarcasm, but even sarcastic mentions of things like that are very, very hard to hear; as a general rule, don't sarcastically remind people of things they're sensitive about. Sometimes, it can be the figurative straw that breaks the camel's back. 

"Since your grand little plan has been foiled, why are you still here?" Rogers asks pointedly after a short silence, glaring at Stark. She briefly wonders if he heard the genius's mutterings.

Stark holds up his metal-clothed hands in surrender; Rogers ducks. A blast of energy hits the wall directly behind Rogers's head. 

Stark's eyes widen in a classic  _shit I just fucked up_ kinda way. "Sorry?" 

Barton groans. "Seriously, Tony? How many walls are you gonna destroy in your own tower?" 

"Well," Stark starts pompously, "as the owner of Avengers Tower, I have every right to destroy my own creation. I am its god." 

"Would you mind trying  _not_ to kill me next time you do that?" Rogers grouses, looking annoyed. "If my reflexes were just a little bit slower I'd be-"

"Capsicle soup," Stark interrupts. "Yes, I know. Next time, remind me to point my death-beams of mass destruction in someone else's way. Maybe Brainwashed Nutjob over there?" 

The Asset sighs. 

"Maybe instead of making stupid insults, you could try making things that actually work and don't kill people," Pietro cuts in, glaring at Stark, expression heated enough that she gathers there must be something personal between them. 

"Pietro, calm down." A new, accented voice cuts in, and the owner of that voice stands at the doorway, hands on her hips. "There has been enough arguing for one day." 

Chastened, Pietro starts towards the door. "I'm sorry, сестричка," he murmurs to Wanda once he gets close enough, so quietly that the Asset has to strain to hear. "I didn't mean to have that happen." 

The telepath nods and says something back that's too quiet for the Asset to hear. Then she turns to the rest of them. "You also get out. Maybe try staying in your rooms and not fighting. I can feel your anger at each other and it makes it _really_ hard to concentrate, so please at least  _attempt_ to be more mature than a five-year-old." 

The Asset feels something akin to laughter welling up in her which she squashes down. The entire group of males turn to look at Wanda. Stark still has his  _I fucked up bad_ face on, while Rogers has an  _excuse you, I did nothing wrong_ expression. Bucky looks somewhere between upset and embarrassed, and Barton just looks like he's watching a quality soap opera. 

"My apologies, ma'am," Rogers says. "I didn't know it'd affect you like that." 

There's something strangely soothing about Rogers's use of the honorific, like a long-lost friend coming back. She guesses that, maybe, in her life before Hydra, she was used to people calling her ma'am. 

"Well, now you know," Wanda says tiredly. "Please, get out of here and go to someplace separate. I'm tired and I'm sure your hostage here is, too." 

Stark looks like he's going to protest, but the telepath just looks at him. He sighs, nods, and walks out of the room. Bucky follows after giving both Rogers and the Asset a parting glance, leaving only Barton and Rogers left; Barton locks eyes with Rogers and apparently sees something he doesn't like, because he hightails it out of there shortly after. 

Now she's all alone with Rogers. 

He turns to look at her, face carefully expressionless. "How are you feeling?" 

She's taken aback. That's not generally the first thing you ask a hostage- that's not generally something you ask your hostage at all. "I'm fine." 

Rogers rolls his eyes. "No, you're not." 

"Well, I could really use a trip to the bathroom, unless you want to send some poor guy in here to clean up my urine," she states bluntly.

He blanches. "You know we can't let you out of your restraints. You  _did_ just try to kill me and Bucky." 

"Well, unless you think it's some form of torture to let me pee on myse-"

"I've told you already, we're not gonna torture you here." Rogers sounds annoyed, and something in his tone makes her feel small and almost helpless, bound up and cuffed as she is. 

"Look, maybe you have some kind of fetish and you get off by lying to people, or maybe you're actually naive enough to think the rest of your team wouldn't go behind your back to try and get intel, but I'm not stupid. I've been taken hostage enough times to know there's only one thing people want, and there are no lines people won't cross to get it." 

Rogers look at her with an expression she doesn't remember ever seeing before- pity. She decides she hates it. "Okay, well, I guess it's your choice to not believe me. I...I wanna ask though..." he pauses, suddenly looking vulnerable. It makes her want to sneer, but she keeps silent, waiting for him to continue. "Do you...how much do you know about me and Bucky?" 

With a sigh, she decides to just answer him honestly. It's not like lying about it is going to do anything for her. "All I know is your name is Steve Rogers, his name is Bucky, and he has a metal arm." 

"You don't remember anything?" 

That, she decides, is something she's not going to answer. She just stares at him, tight-lipped, until finally Rogers gives up. "I'll send someone along to help you to the bathroom." He turns his back on her and walks out. 

As she looks after him, she can't help but wonder...exactly who was she to him, in her past life? 

 

* * *

 

It's evening by the time she sees another Avenger. 

At least, she assumes he's an Avenger. He isn't wearing the uniform the guards were when they assisted her to the bathroom earlier in the day, nor is he wearing the slacks the doctor was when she took the IV out. Instead, he's in a polo shirt and pants; something far more casual than anything she's seen anyone else wear. 

"Hello," he greets cordially, pulling out a chair and sitting down a foot or so away from her bed. He seems calm, much calmer than any of the others in this tower, and his unassuming looks- brown hair, brown eyes- reinforce it. She's learned her lesson about trusting appearances, though. She has no doubt he's just as keen to get Hydra intel out of her by any means necessary- that is, assuming they know she  _is_ Hydra. 

She stares at him for a long moment. 

"How are you feeling? They told me you fell from quite a height. Any normal human being would've been killed from the impact."

"It's a good thing I'm not normal then, I guess." 

Brown Eyes chuckles slightly. "We confirmed you had no broken bones, but you have quite a few bruised ones. Depending on how much of the serum is in your blood, it could take awhile for you to heal completely." 

She's confused (indeed, these days it seems like that's the only thing she ever is). Why would he care one way or another about how quickly she heals? 

"Are you a doctor?" she asks. That would certainly explain his interest in her; they obviously know she's a super soldier by now, and she can't imagine any scientist who wouldn't want a chance to experiment on her. Many previous hostage experiences she underwent had scientists just like that, with qualms just as nonexistent as her masters. 

Brown Eyes nods. "Not a medical one, but I am a doctor. I specialize in gamma radiation and nuclear physics, mostly." 

Like a flash, understanding comes to her in the form of a long ago failed mission to retrieve failed super soldier serum. He's Bruce Banner, the scientist that tried to recreate the process that created her and the first super soldier, Captain America, and ended up failing and gaining some very interesting anger management issues along the way. That's something she had definitely not expected; as soon as she'd seen that, she hightailed it out of the building as fast as she could go, damn the serum. 

Her masters, needless to say, had not been happy. 

Banner tilts his head, giving her a knowing smile. "You recognize me now, don't you? You know who I am." 

"I've already told your pals, you aren't getting any information out of me." 

"I wasn't trying to get anything out of you, just asking a simple question." He crosses his arms and leans back in his chair, seeming to assess her. "I believe the Captain has already told you, we're not planning on hurting you here. We do want information, yes, but unlike Hydra, we have lines we don't cross." 

It's oddly surreal, she reflects, that he echoes the very same words she'd spoken to Rogers just hours before.  _"There's only one thing people want, and there are no lines people won't cross to get it."_

"The Captain?" she asks, trying to stall him. It's cowardly, but she's just not feeling torture today. Or any day. 

He gives her a confused look. "You know who I am but don't know about Captain America?" 

Captain America? He's here? She'd overheard her masters speaking of him, several times, decades ago. They never mentioned his true name, and she'd never bothered to ask. It's a strange twist of fate that she should finally get to meet another super soldier- someone just like her.

"Who is he?" 

"He's...Captain America is Steve Rogers. I thought everyone knew that." 

"The only time I've ever heard of him was when I was-" nope nope  _nopity nope_ she's not going there right now- "otherwise preoccupied. You'll have to pardon my forgetfulness."

"But how," Banner repeats, "do you know who I am but not about Captain America?" 

She stays silent. Like hell is she going to say anything else about it. But...she can't believe it. Steve Rogers, her target, is in actuality Captain America. No wonder her masters had sent her on this mission. No one poses a greater threat to Hydra, in her masters' opinions, than the Captain. Therefore, this new information should make her even more eager to kill him and Bucky. 

But...maybe she'll wait a bit to do it. Gain their trust, act like the traumatized girl she knows men like them- super-powered humans with an ego- like to see. The information they're providing her, ulterior motives or no, is invaluable, both for her and for her masters. Maybe, if she can gather enough intel, they won't punish her for being stupid enough, slow enough, weak enough, to have been taken hostage. Maybe. 

"What's Bucky's last name?" she finally asks.

Banner gives her a weird look but answers anyway. "It's Barnes. Bucky Barnes." 

 _Bucky Barnes._ The name feels bitter and metallic and nauseating, just like the name Steve Rogers. She supposes that just reinforces the fact that they were enemies, even before Hydra. There's no other reason she should feel so terrible just hearing their names...right? 

To be honest, she's in a very fragile state of mind at the moment. She really shouldn't be contemplating these things. 

"Hey, are you okay?" Banner's voice brings her back with the realization she'd zoned out yet again. She just nods, refusing to speak. "Okay, well, you look tired. I'm gonna go now, but if you need anything, just contact FRIDAY. She'll contact whoever you need." 

_FRIDAY? Who's that? And how the hell am I going to contact her?_

"Hello. I am FRIDAY." She has to fight not to jump, to keep her heart rate steady and hands unclenched. "Do not be alarmed. I am only an AI created by Mr. Stark. I have been given permission to serve your needs. If you have need of my assistance, simply call my name wherever you may be in this building." 

 _She's_ everywhere? The Asset thinks in dismay. A sentient AI created by Stark, most likely extremely aware and loyal, definitely throws a wrench into her murder-Barnes-and-Rogers plan. She has to give it to Stark; he's definitely very intelligent and graced with a healthy dose of foresight. 

"I'll be going now," Banner says, interrupting her thoughts for the second time. "I'll see you tomorrow." 

The door clicks shut. 

 _Well,_ she thinks, now _how the hell am I going to kill them?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I'm trying to think up a codename for the reader once she finally joins the Avengers (it's gonna be awhile, but it'll happen eventually). Since she's all into manipulating air and stuff, I was thinking maybe Tempest, but then that makes her seem too much like Storm from X-men. Any other suggestions?


	5. Of Flashbacks And Mindfucks

Several more days pass by in basically the same way. Various Avengers stop by to see her every few hours or so, either in an attempt to get intel or because they're bored (for most, she'd definitely say it's from boredom). Out of everyone, she sees Rogers the most, although Barton and Banner are closely tied for second. Romanoff stops by occasionally at around four in the morning, either from insomnia or because tired people tend to let important information slip, and Stark and Wanda always visit at least once a day. Probably the person she sees least is Barnes. She's tempted to ask Rogers why, exactly, she never sees him, but guesses he just doesn't have any interest in the hostage who tried to kill him- perfectly understandable, really. 

Honestly, though, even with all the unwanted company, it gets really boring. Chained to a table as she is, there's nothing she can do- and even if she could, she's not sure what she  _would_ do. Over two thirds of her life is spent with her frozen in a huge block of ice; the other third is spent on missions and training. She's never gotten spare time before, wouldn't even know what to do with it if she had.

With nothing left to do, she's forced into thought. 

At first, she thinks only about her targets. She ponders their weak points and their strengths, imagines each and every possible scenario in which she could kill them and every thing that might or might not go wrong. But eventually, such thoughts get boring, and she thinks of other things.

She wonders if Stark was right when he called her a brainwashed nutjob. She wonders what her life would've been like if Hydra hadn't taken her, hadn't trained her and forged her into a weapon- into  _their_ weapon. She wonders if she ever had a scrap of good, a single redeeming quality in her in her past life; if she was ever more than the monster, the lethal destroyer that her masters made her into. She considers asking Rogers about it, but then what reason would he have to tell her the truth? 

Somewhere in the depths of her mind, so far down she barely even acknowledges it, she wonders if she could ever break free of Hydra. 

But even if she could, she always reminds herself, there is no place for her without them; not now, not ever. She's nothing but a soulless killing machine, programmed, trained for one purpose. And right now that purpose is to kill her targets. She was not designed for friendship, she was not created to have a home.

Every night, she dreams, horrible things about death and each one always, always, ending with someone she cares about dying. And always, always, _always,_ it's her fault that it happens. 

After the first nightmares racked her mind during her training period with Hydra, she learned how to silence her screams before anyone woke up. It wasn't until she'd become the Winter Assassin, the Asset, that she was given the gift of sleep meds.

Part of her wonders what the Avengers would think if they knew  _why_ her masters gave them to her; not as a gift, but as a way to ensure her silence during sleep. To keep any nearby enemy unaware. Now, even without them, she's silent, the frantically racing heart monitor the only sound in the deathly stillness of her room. Hydra trained her well. Perhaps too well. 

Indeed, as she focuses on calming down her racing heartbeat and slowing her breathing, she wonders if there's really any original thought left in her. If there's even a spark of the person she once was inside her- if she was ever a person. If she was ever anything other than Hydra's Asset. 

She opens her eyes, pupils expanding to take in the nearly pitch-black room. She can make out edges and outlines, her serum-enhanced vision allowing her to see far more than a normal person. Which is the only reason why she sees Romanoff as she enters the room. 

The Asset says nothing, waiting for Romanoff to speak first. The redhead grins at her, somehow managing to lock eyes even in the darkness of the room. 

"You know, I haven't managed to catch you asleep yet," Romanoff says casually. "Do you have some sort of people radar that alerts you when someone's coming, or are you just hyper-aware?" 

She shrugs non-committedly. "As an assassin, you should know the answer to that." 

Romanoff makes a noise somewhere between a huff and a snort, then sits gracefully down on a chair. "Which brings me to the question: you were trained at the Red Room? How did I not see you there? I remember every single person I've ever seen there, yet I don't remember you." 

She remains silent. 

"You know," Romanoff tries again after a pause, "Rogers really likes you for some reason. No idea why. You don't exactly talk that much."

That stings, just a little bit, but she discards the thought easily. "What makes you think he likes me? We're enemies, are we not?" 

"Ah, but isn't that exactly what creates such great sexual tension?" The assassin grins wickedly at her. 

She closes her eyes, takes a deep, slightly frustrated breath. "Doesn't sexual tension need two people for it to be called that, and not 'creepy obsession'?" 

Romanoff laughs. "I knew I liked you for a reason."

"Sorry," she finds herself saying, "I don't swing that way." 

Romanoff winks. "That's what they all say."

"Why do you always come in here so late- early- late?" she lets herself ask. No harm in asking, right? 

The assassin shrugs. "I'll let you choose between insomnia, nightmares, and awkward one-night stands. And Steve asking me to check up on you." 

She quickly reminds herself; Steve = Rogers. "I'm gonna guess it's not that last one." 

Romanoff simply shrugs. The Asset wonders if her own silences and refusal to answer questions are that annoying, and realizes they probably are. In any case, she can't find it in herself to break the silence. She simply stares at her bed, eyes tracing over the bland, unoriginal pattern of the hospital-issue sheets for the thousandth time. The silence is so long that she expects Romanoff to leave at any moment, but she doesn't. The Asset can hear the faint rise and fall of her breathing, can almost sense her heartbeat. She experimentally reaches out with her powers, but the now-familiar knife-sharp pain slices into her as Stark's bracelet keeps them bound up. 

"Are you in pain right now?" the redhead suddenly asks out of the blue. 

She starts despite herself. "Always," she says quietly. She knows a fellow assassin would understand pain, wouldn't judge her for revealing it- indeed, she most likely already knew. "My- my head never stops hurting."

"I can get you pain killers-"

"No." Then, before she can stop herself, "I've been drugged enough for five lifetimes." 

Romanoff nods, something in her expression seeming like she was expecting that answer. When she stands up, she offers the Asset the tiniest quirk of her lips- as close to a smile as the Asset will probably ever get. "It's almost five. Rogers will be here within two hours." The Asset nods in return, as much gratitude as she'll show. The next moment, the assassin is gone, leaving her alone. 

The Asset sighs and closes her eyes. In another life, they would've been friends, she knows. It's yet another indication of just how screwed up she is that that will never happen. 

It's at times like these that she wishes Hydra never existed. 

 

* * *

 

Surprisingly, the next person to walk through the door isn't Rogers. 

Wanda Maximoff strides in, expression unreadable in the way only a telepath can manage. "Good morning." 

The Asset stays silent. 

Wanda sits down next to her, smiling just a little bit. "I bet you're wondering why it's me, not Steve, in here right now." 

"I'm just surprised. Didn't know you liked my company that much." 

"In all honesty," she says, giving the assassin a sympathetic half-smile, "I thought you seemed lonely. Thought I'd give you some company." 

"I thought you couldn't read my mind," the assassin protests. "Why would you think I'm lonely?" 

Wanda laughs a little. "I don't have to read minds to sense emotion. You see, I can always kind of feel the emotions of everyone around me, no matter how hard I try to shut them out. It's why it gets really hard to be around people who are arguing." 

She can't help it; she's curious. She asks, "How do you survive fights, then?" 

"I'm not really sure, to be honest." The telepath shrugs. "I think it might be the adrenaline; that or my mind somehow knows to shut down. We're not quite sure." 

She nods, processing that. After a long silence, Wanda waves a bit, jumping in her seat and causing their eyes to meet. "I've decided!" she exclaims excitedly.

The Asset blinks, thrown. "What?" 

"Well, everyone's always interrogating you, so why don't we turn the tables?"

She's going to blame the absurdity of that sentence for how long it takes her to process it. "Um...what?" 

Wanda grins. "Today, you're having an exclusive interview with me! You can ask me whatever you like about us Avengers- nothing top secret, of course, but other than that, anything." 

If her hands were free right now, she'd be holding her head in her hands. Her brain feels like Internet Explorer- slow, extremely stupid, and pretty much useless. After she stares at the other girl dumbly for several seconds, the telepath finally seems to take pity on her. "Okay, let's start easy. Let's take Steve. What do you want to know about him? His favorite color? Favorite band?" She smirks, "Maybe what his type of girl is?" 

"Is he really a super soldier?" 

"Out of all the things you could've asked and you pick that," Wanda scoffs. "Yes, he is. Bucky, too."

 _Wait, what?_ "Barnes is a super soldier?" No wonder it was so hard to use her powers on them. Their muscle density and general mass must be far larger than any normal human, and, when combined with Barnes' metal arm...

"Yep. They're both stronger than you, though. For some reason, the serum worked a lot better on them than it did on you." 

The Asset looks down, futilely trying to will away the flashbacks that accompany Wanda's words. When they come, it's accompanied by a searing throb in her forehead.

_There's the feeling of nothingness, like she's suspended in an abyss, no tethers to anyone or anything. Then heat and cold rush in all at once, along with voices. They speak in some language she doesn't know, rapidly, angrily. She hears footsteps, then a scared, English voice speaking at the rough prodding of others with heavy accents._

_"She...she's a mutant, her genes are fighting the serum, there's nothing I can do! Please, please, you have to believe me, she's a mutant, it's not me! It's not me, I swear!"_

_The voices speak again; by this time she's realized they sound European. Spanish? No...Dutch? Still no. She swears she's heard this language before..._

_She realizes, with a start, what's happening. She can vaguely feel restraints on her body; just barely sense needles and electrodes and beeping all around her. She's in some kind of hospital._

_No, not a hospital. Hospitals are for the sick. She's perfectly healthy._

_More voices, urgent, panicked, angry. They talk about serums and hyper metabolisms, something about DNA and biology, and then more of that foreign language. What is it? German?_

_Then she hears one of them speak slower, threateningly, and the knowledge comes like a slap to the face. It's Russian._

_It's Russian, and this is World War II. It's Russian, the entire world is fighting itself, she's strapped to a table, and people are talking about some kind of 'super soldier' process and, if she's not mistaken, her genetics._

_She tries to move. She tries to sit up and tear her restraints off; she tries to fight. To scream. To thrash. To open her eyes and look into theirs and tell them just how awful of people they are. That she'll_ never  _fight for them or their twisted form of government._

_She fails._

_Her limbs are like lead, her eyeballs weighted down. Her heartbeat continues its calm trek, peacefully beating as she desperately struggles within her mind._ Let me out!  _She tries to scream, and fails at that, too._

_And finally, finally, she gives up. Finally, she realizes just how helpless she is. And finally, she realizes that there's no one coming for her. There's no way out._

_They're speaking in Russian, and she's doomed._

With a sickening throb in her head, the room seems to fade, spinning around enough to make her dizzy. Distantly, she hears voices- how many? One? Two? Everything seems distorted, and in her panic, they, too, sound Russian. 

There's a hand on her forehead, and she thrashes violently, trying to wound, to maim, to  _kill_ because she may have no way out, but she's not going out without a fight, she will  _not_ let those Russian bastards win if she can help it-

Then her head clears, as if by magic, and everything is back to normal. There's only one voice, and although the accent is almost Russian, the words are not. There's only one hand, and that hand is not trying to turn her into a super soldier. She already  _is_ one. If the voice was trying to turn her into a super soldier, it'd definitely be more than a little redundant. 

"Shhh, it's alright, you're safe," a soft voice murmurs. Something soothing and cool is present inside her head, and-

Wait. 

 _Inside_ her _head?_

"Get out, get out, get out get out get ou-!" 

"Calm down!" 

Her eyes snap open at the familiar voice. Wanda. Telepath. 

Enemy.  

"GET OUT OF MY HEAD!" She screams. She grabs at her powers, buried beneath the weight of Stark's invention, and  _pulls._

With a stab of sheer agony, the bracelet splits, falling off her arm. The next second, Wanda's slammed against the opposite wall. And then she's screaming, the pain in her head blinding her. She's vaguely aware of tears running down her face, of blood dripping from her nose, but she keeps Wanda pinned. "GET- OUT- OF- MY- HEAD!" She roars, throwing the telepath against the wall at every word. 

Finally, finally, the presence retreats from her head, manifesting instead in a faint red glow around Wanda, protecting her from the full force of her- of the Asset's- powers. And gradually, gradually the pain in her head begins to lessen. 

It's only then that she realizes what she's done. 

"I'm- I'm so- so sorry," she whispers, blinking away tears, unable to do anything but watch as Wanda slowly picks herself off the ground, holding her ribs with one hand and keeping up a red shield with the other. 

She expects rage, she expects the girl to immediately go tell Stark to finally have his fun torturing her, but instead the telepath takes a deep, rasping breath. "I saw- saw inside your head," she murmurs, so lowly the assassin has to strain to hear. "And I understand. I'm not-" she winces, hugging herself righter, "I'm not happy about what just happened, but I understand why."

The Asset nods, opens her mouth to apologize again, and stops. Why the hell is she apologizing? Wanda is her enemy. Although, she has to admit, if apologizing more will keep the telepath's mouth shut...But then again, she doubts anything she can do now will keep Wanda from telling whoever she pleases. 

"I'm not going to tell anyone else about this, don't worry." 

She stares at Wanda. "I'm sorry, what?" 

"You had no idea what you were doing. You were in the middle of a flashback and I invaded your mind, which I'm sure has been done far too many times in your life. If anything, it was my fault. I shouldn't have done it, but what's done is done."

She nods. She almost asks how, exactly, the other girl is planning on explaining why the bracelet is on the ground, nonfunctional and broken in half instead of on the Asset's arm, but keeps her mouth shut. It's possible Wanda completely forgot, which means that she now has a prime opportunity to kill her targets the next time she's in the same room with them. She just has to keep her wrist carefully hidden under the metal cuffs and bide her time.

She's so lost in thought and planning that she almost misses Wanda's goodbye. She manages to pull herself out of it long enough to bid the telepath a clipped 'bye' before slipping back into reflection. 

The Asset vaguely realizes she probably should've asked Wanda how exactly she was planning on explaining her bruised ribs away, but shrugs it off. Wanda's the twin brother of Pietro, the speedster trained by Hydra. There's no way Hydra wouldn't have taught them both about lies and covers; she'll be fine. 

In hindsight, she'd just like to say that that was very much not the case. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Really short chapter, but what's coming next is probably going to end up being quite long and I felt like ya'll would rather have a 2.8k chapter now than have to wait possibly another week or so for a 4k+ one.
> 
> I'd like to ask: what do you think of this so far? Yay fic or nay fic? If ya'll could leave comments down below ^^^ (just imagine it's pointing the other direction lol) that'd literally make my day(s) and honestly they're what make me continue writing so if you want to see more of this, comment!


	6. Hiraeth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hiraeth: a Welsh word which has no direct translation; homesickness, nostalgia, a longing for a home that never was, or grief for the lost past in your life.

Rogers comes in not long after Wanda leaves, accompanied by Barnes and Barton. She can hardly believe her luck. Not even two hours after she broke Stark's bracelet, she already has an opportunity to off her targets. 

She stares blankly through Rogers' and Barton's greetings; she stares as Barnes says nothing at all. She silently begins to formulate a plan, hoping to God no one will notice the broken, silvery bracelet lying discarded on the ground, half-hidden behind a chair. 

First, she needs to get Barton out of the picture. If Rogers and Barnes were normal people, or if her powers were just a bit stronger, she wouldn't worry about the archer. But her targets are super soldiers and somehow resistant to her powers- either because they're much heavier than normal humans or because something in their DNA makes them resistant to mutant powers, she's not sure which- and she's exhausted, both mentally and physically. If her hands were free, all she'd have to do is wring Barton's neck very quickly and that'd be that, but she's bound. To a freaking table. 

 _Or,_ a rather sensible and also rather done sounding part of her brains says,  _you could just use your powers to unlock your cuffs and strangle them to death_ without  _having to resort to your powers._

She nods. Yes. Take out Barton, tear off her handcuffs and eliminate her targets. Shouldn't be too hard.

There are only two problems:

1\. FRIDAY, Stark's omniscient, intelligent AI who would most likely alert somebody if three people were suddenly taken out by their hostage, and,

2\. The last time she tried this, the only thing she had to show for her efforts were a few broken ribs. She knows she can take out one of them without too much difficulty, but two of them, at the same time?

Yet she knows this is her only chance. There's no way she can just casually kill one of them. She seriously doubts anyone would just breeze on by like,  _"You killed an extremely valuable member of our team right under our nose in an act of cold-blooded murder? Oh, okay, no problem, that's totally cool! Why don't we just give you some more alone time with the other target so you can off him, too! We'll even let you keep your power-dampening bracelet off! Maybe you can escape and kill the rest of us while you're at it!_

Yeah. Not happening.

For a moment, the thought comes to her: would she actually kill everyone else in this building? She's done it before, of course, but somehow, now, it's different. Before, it was almost a pleasure to kill the scientists who'd 'experimented' (read: tortured) on her, the guards who'd laughed and catcalled, the interrogators who'd beaten and waterboarded and sliced her open.

This time, instead of evil scientists looking to exploit her body, she'd gotten a seemingly kind one who was eager to make sure she wasn't in any pain. Instead of perverted guards trying to humiliate her, she'd gotten awkward, cautious ones who were almost too terrified to even take her to the bathroom without an Avenger in tow. And instead of sadistic, evil interrogators, she'd gotten...the Avengers. 

She'd gotten a motley group of superhumans, assassins, and scientists. She'd gotten a bunch of humans who fought among themselves and rolled their eyes at each other's bad jokes and playfully beat each other up when they teased each other. She'd gotten to see an assortment of people who comforted, protected, and supported each other. 

It would be a lie to say she didn't envy them. 

Suddenly, there's a hand in front of her face. She goes to bite it, but it's hastily withdrawn, amid boisterous laughter from Barton. "I thought she was gonna bite you!" 

"Again," Barnes chimes in, the faintest smirk on his lips. 

"Wait, she's done it before? When? Why wasn't I there!?" Barton demands. 

"Why aren't we a little more concerned about the fact she's not only bitten me once, but tried to do it again?" 

"Sorry, Captain, sometimes a girl just can't help herself." She regrets the words, and the vaguely flirtatious tone she'd spoken them in, the moment they come out. When Rogers  _blushes_  she wishes, not for the first time, that her hands were free, simply so she could bury her face into them. 

"Aw, forbidden romance," Barton squeals. "My favorite!" 

As one, all three of them turn to stare at him. "What?" Rogers asks. "This isn't..."

"It totally is," Barton insists.

"Barton, I know you love trying to set us up, but you really need to stop."

"Aw, come on!" 

When the conversation continues on further, she drops out, impatient. She just want to get this over with. She's sick of being chained down and imprisoned. She hates having to  _think,_ especially when she knows all her daydreams about one day getting free of Hydra are just that- daydreams. 

So, despite the warning signals in her head screaming  _no!_ she musters her strength and looks straight at Barton.

One twitch of her fingers, and he's choking, grasping his neck. It would've been cleaner, swifter, to just wrench his neck and get it over with, but something inside her couldn't do it.

Barnes and Rogers turn towards her, equal amounts shock and horror on their faces. Before they can say anything, she's strangling them, too, and then she looks down at her cuffs and unlocks them. 

Her legs are so unstable she almost collapses on her first step, but she manages to grab the side of the bed to support her until her legs are functioning again. Every second she stands there is another second something could go wrong, so she pushes off perhaps a little too soon, almost falling again. She spares a quick glance at Barton. He's out. 

She wishes she could say the same of Barnes and Rogers, both of whom are now starting towards her, even though she knows they have, at most, a minute or two left before even they succumb to unconsciousness. As weak as they are, killing them shouldn't be a challenge at all, even if the combined effort of strangling both of them is beginning to wear on her.

So she steps towards them, flexing her fingers, already deciding which way she wants to kill them. Breaking their necks seems far too personal, but banging their heads into a wall is much too messy; she may be an assassin, but at least she's polite enough to leave the survivors with minimal mess to clean up. Well. Apart from the bodies, of course. 

Just as she's decided she'll use pressure points (fatal if given a strong enough blow), Steve speaks. He's gasping for air, barely seconds away from passing out, but still he manages to crawl towards her, grab her knee. She fights not to wrench it out of his grip- doesn't he know she could end him in seconds? Pathetic. 

"Y/n," he whispers, "My little Tempest, you're stronger than this." 

And now, she flinches away from him, eyes wide.  _Tempest._ She  _knows_ that name- knows it because it's what he called her, nearly every single day for years.  _My little Tempest._ There's only one person who ever called her that- a person buried so deep inside her mind she'd forgotten him entirely, but now he's in front of her.  _You're stronger than this._

And now, for a fleeting instant, it all comes back. A tiny, scrawny blond; trips to Coney Island; days of cooking and trips to the library and comforting Steve (because that's his name, she _knows_ it, and not just from someone else telling her) after another day of getting beat up. Dances Steve never took part in, parties he always tried to get out of, so many of which she ditched for him because a night with a friend was so much better than a boring party without one.

Then Steve- her best friend Steve, her biggest what-if Steve- is in front of her, murmuring things like  _it's okay now_ and  _I'm here_ and  _you're safe_. But then the memories subside, and then, finally, she realizes she's screaming.

She's screaming, and now she's surrounded by the entire Avengers team, minus still-unconscious Barton, and she can't- she can't-

_She can't remember it anymore._

She looks straight into the eyes of the man holding her, whispering reassurances and encouragements and she realizes she knew who he was, she  _knew it,_ she knew  _him_ as more than just a face and a name and a suit. And she looks past him, at Barnes, and the same nauseating, sickening feeling comes back and she  _knows_ she knew him, that he was- he was-

Who  _was_ he?

And then her screams turns into tears, and her tears into sobs and then she's babbling, something she knows is most likely not English but she doesn't care she doesn't care she  _doesn't care she. Doesn't. Care._ And she looks into the deep blue eyes of Rogers (not Steve, _not Steve,_ only Rogers) and she hates them. She  _hates_ his eyes and she hates  _him_ and as she looks past him again at Barnes, she _hates_ him too, because.  _She. Knows. Them._  

But finally her babbling quiets, then silences, and she wordlessly buries her head into Rogers' chest, ashamed she's doing it to her- her- her  _enemybrotherfriendally_ and she waits. Waits for someone else to say something, because it sure as hell isn't going to be her. 

And when nothing happens, she pulls back, trying to summon up disgust or revulsion that she just hugged and cried intothe chest of her enemy but all she feels is safety and a faint tiredness _._ And when deadly, unearthly silence still remains in the room, she finally looks around. 

"Okay," Stark says slowly, breaking the silence, "would you mind telling me how you managed to trash my bracelet and this entire room, knock out one of my teammates, almost kill two more, and then start screaming bloody murder?" 

 

* * *

 

Not surprisingly, Stark doesn't take the whole yes-I-almost-killed-two-of-your-teammates-and-have-no-regrets thing very well. 

Also not surprisingly, no one else really does, either. Even Romanoff seems a little pissed, and Wanda and Pietro stay much further out of her way than they used to. 

The surprising thing? Barton doesn't seem to care. Like at all. 

The very next morning after, when the Asset had been put in what was basically a giant fishbowl until Stark could find a better way to neutralize her powers, the archer walked straight in with his usual huge, shit-eating grin. 

"Good morning!" 

She has no idea how a morning can be good when the person you're talking to just knocked you unconscious and tried to kill both you and your friends, but you know. Whatever. It happens.

"Well, you're just as quiet as ever. Don't know why I worried. Was afraid you might start with the whole guilt-ridden 'I didn't mean to, Clint! I'm so sorry!'s'."

She stares at him some more. 

"Yeah, I didn't think you'd actually apologize, don't worry." 

"Why don't you hate me?" she asks, a little quieter than she meant.

Barton looks at her like she just grew a second head, stopping a foot or so in front of the glass. "Hate you? Why would I do that?" 

"Um...I did just try to kill you yesterday."

"Oh, honey, if I had to start hating every single person who tried to kill me, I'd hate one third of the world's population, including most of my team members. Maybe it's just me, but that seems a little taxing on the mental state." 

She blinks. How is he so...casually flippant? "Is this some sort of thing among you Avengers? Is nearly getting killed a joke to you?" 

"Well, since we nearly get killed approximately three times a day by Stark's awful attempts at cooking, we had to learn to inject some levity into it, otherwise it just got really depressing." Barton makes a face. "It's truly awful. If we wanted to torture you, all we'd need to do is feed you some of that."

There it is again; torture. She tries not to flinch. 

The archer must see it, because when he speaks again, his tone is much softer. "In all honesty, I'm best friends with an assassin who's tried to kill me numerous times. I'm not gonna get offended by something like that."

"You're..." she hesitates, not sure what to say. An Idealist? Way too casual about this? Naive? 

"Willing to look for the good in other people," Barton finishes for her, tone even gentler. "Rogers told me what happened after I went under and I know there's still a good person in there somewhere, Birdie."

She gapes at him, wide-eyed. Never has she ever been told anything like that. "I'm not so sure about that," she whispers, telling herself her vision is blurry from lack of food, not from anything else. "I don't think there's ever been anything good in me." When Barton's eyes get a little too empathetic, a little too emotional, she frantically looks for an exit. "Also, did you just call me Birdie?" 

Barton grins, the moment gone. "I figured the only reason I'm still alive is because you love me so much, so why not name you after the man you so ardently admire?" 

She gives him a look somewhere between annoyed and confused. "How is Birdie...oh." Right. He'd told her his codename is Hawkeye. "And I do  _not_ admire you. At all." 

The archer clutches his heart, staggering backwards in mock agony. "No!" he half-screeches, "how could you? You have-" he sinks dramatically to one knee-  _"destroyed_ me! I will  _never-"_ he convulses- "recover from this injury! I am-" he collapses to the ground-  _"finished!"_

Before she can even stop herself, a hysterical bubble of laughter comes out of her and before she has any idea what she's doing she's laughing, the deep, ab-hurting kinda laugh she can't recall ever doing before. And then Barton's laughing, too, then both of them are laughing so hard tears are coming down their cheeks, so hard they can barely breathe. 

"I can't-" she half-sobs, half-gasps out, "I don't even know why- I'm- la-aughing." 

"Me neither," Barton chokes out, "I can't- can't  _breathe_ oh my Go-" 

He freezes, laughter dying out. Following his gaze, the Asset freezes, too. 

"I, um, I heard a scream," Barnes says awkwardly. "I thought..." 

Any laughter she'd had dries up in her throat, replaced by ice. Any remnants of belonging, of feeling like she was a person, are blown away by the same breeze she tried to kill Barnes with yesterday. 

Barton gives her a tiny, sympathetic smile and the mouthed words  _wow what a dick, am I right_ and her lips manage to quirk upwards the smallest bit. "Bucky, we were doing this thing called 'having fun." The archer pronounces the last words very slowly like he's speaking to a child. "It's where you-"

"I know what having fun is," Barnes says, a twinge of annoyance in his eyes. 

Barton and the Asset exchange looks. 

"And stop- whatever you're doing."

"Looking at each other?" Barton asks, raising an eyebrow. 

"It's-"

"What, are you jealous?" the words come out before she can stop them, and as she's handcuffed still she bangs her forehead into the glass.  _What is it with me lately? You'd think I'm trying to_ talk  _to my enemies._

Instead of responding, Barnes just stares at her for a long time. She stares back.  _Two can play that game, my friend._

"Look, sorry to break up you lovebirds," Barton busts in, making the Asset turn her glare towards him, "But I was having a really nice convo with my little Birdie and you waltzed in here and interrupted." 

"Convo?" She and Barnes ask at the same time, incredulous. 

"...Did I mention I have a daughter?" 

"How your wife puts up with you, I'll never know," Barnes mutters. For some reason, the knowledge- Barton has a _wife,_ what the hell- makes her feel slightly uncomfortable. 

"Well, I'm not around a lot. That's probably how," Barton replies with a grin, standing up. "Well, if you're so keen on staying here and not giving me my alone time with Birdie here, I'll be goi-"

"I never said I wasn't going," Barnes says, a bit too quickly. Despite herself, the clear  _I wouldn't touch her with a ten-foot pole_ makes her stomach sink. She knows she shouldn't care- hell, she's supposed to  _kill_ him- but _still_. 

Perhaps Barton was right. Maybe there is  _something_ still inside her other than Hydra's conditioning. 

"Nope, you're the one that came in here. You basically volunteered yourself, can't get out of it now!" With a cheery (and mocking) wave, Barton walks out, the door slamming shut behind him.

Great.

Now she's alone with Guy She Just Tried To Kill #2. #1 being Rogers, of course. 

The silence is awkward and deafening. She keeps her eyes studiously trained away from Barnes as best she can and moves as little as possible. Barnes seems to do the same, but since she's not looking at him and the powers she uses as her second pair of eyes are contained with her inside the fishbowl, she can't be sure. 

Several minutes after the silence had gotten so awkward she'd begun seriously contemplating how best to knock herself out (she's fairly certain a few good bangs of her head into the glass would do the trick), she feels eyes on her. She instantly looks up at him and their eyes lock.

Great. Now it's even  _more_ awkward. 

"Steve isn't mad, in case you were wondering," he finally says. 

"I tried to kill him," she states flatly, "but he's not mad." 

"Apparently." 

"Barton's not mad, Rogers isn't mad. What is it with me almost killing people and them being okay with it? I thought it was a usual thing to get kinda pissed at the people who almost ended you." 

"I wouldn't call the Avengers usual, but yes." 

"You say that like you're not one of them." And, okay. This is probably the longest conversation she's had with anyone yet, and of all people it's with this guy. 

"I'm...not. Not really." 

He doesn't look eager to elaborate, which is pretty reasonable since, well, she tried to kill him (she keeps repeating that, but that's the only thing in her mind right now, that she  _tried,_ she didn't succeed. She  _failed._ She failed and she's fairly certain her masters are gonna send her through the scrambler again for that). Instead of asking him that, she asks instead, "You  _are_ mad at me for killing you though, right?" 

"Yes. But I'm more pissed because you also tried to kill Steve." 

There's really nothing to say to that, so she keeps silent. 

The awkwardness grows again, so she risks another glance at him. He's not looking at her, and somehow she finds herself continuing to look at him. Before, she'd been studying how he moved, how he talked, which hand was dominant, his style of fighting (which she'd been privy to several times from the frequent fights Rogers and Stark got into). She's never really looked at  _him,_ at his hair color or eye color or how high his cheekbones are. 

His hair is fairly short; long enough to cover his ears a bit but still pretty short, a longer strand falling over his face. His eyes are startlingly blue, even bluer than Rogers'. She wonders if he maybe wears contacts to enhance the color, but from what she's seen of him, she doubts it. He's dressed all in black, just like every other time she's seen him, and his stance is tense, somewhere between angry and scared. 

He looks back and they lock eyes again. She looks away quickly, not really feeling like engaging in a staring contest. 

"Does- is Rogers-" she hesitates, not sure how to word it. Barnes raises an eyebrow slightly. "Is he your..."

"Friend?" 

"Yeah. You seem closer to each other than the rest of the team." 

"He's my best friend," Barnes says carefully, looking somewhere between surprised and suspicious; of what, she doesn't know. 

She looks down. Her heart sinks all the way down into her stomach as her heartbeat begins to pick up.

That fits with the tiny, broken piece of memory she somehow managed to retain after yesterday- Rogers quietly telling her how Bucky, his best friend, was off to war. Was leaving him behind. Either this is some hell of a set-up, or...

_Or..._

_No. No. I can't think of that._ She can't entertain, even for a moment, that Rogers is- is-

That she's-

She closes her eyes, barely feeling the cold glass against her face as a tear slides down her cheek. She faintly hears Barnes say something, but can't find it within her to listen. All her surroundings have dimmed down, like her life is a camera and it's focused only on the inside of her own mind, nothing else. 

And over and over again, repeating like a mantra inside her head, is one sentence. 

_I have to kill my best friends._


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aктив: Asset  
> Черная Вдова: Black Widow  
> голубка: Dove
> 
> (If you know Russian and could improve any of these translations, that'd be great! I wanna make this as accurate as possible)

When she finally comes to again, she's surrounded; Rogers next to Barnes, Wanda and Barton close behind, and somewhere in her peripheral, movement that can only be Romanoff. The only people missing are Stark, Banner, and Pietro. 

This doesn't bode well. 

"Bucky told us you...weren't feeling well." Rogers breaks the silence cautiously, blue eyes fixed on her. "He said you were babbling in Russian." 

She says nothing. 

Then, from behind her, "I came in first. I know exactly what you were saying, so I'd suggest you either tell us what's going on or I'll tell them for you." 

She doesn't even glance Romanoff's way, not caring enough to acknowledge her. "There's no way some delirious babbling would tell you anything that you could hold over me as blackmail. I'm calling your bluff." 

An amused snort, and creaking leather. Romanoff says, "What if I tell you there was one sentence you kept repeating over and over..." she pauses. The Asset clenches her jaw. "Something about, I don't know, maybe killing your be-"

"Stop." She hasn't thought this through. It was probably Romanoff's plan to throw this at her when she was still disoriented, when her broken mind had gotten just enough puzzle pieces to fit together a single scene. She has no place to run, no way to get out of this, and she knows Romanoff is all too aware of that. There's no way the Red Room trainee would've challenged her unless she was fully aware there is no way out. No loopholes. 

Although she admires the redhead's brilliance, she hates it all the same. 

Romanoff paces the floor, walking around the glass until they're face to face and the Asset can see her smug smile. She knows she's won. "Well, активы?"

She shudders before she can even think to stop. Актив. Asset. Romanoff knows Hydra well. Knows what they called her. God knows what else the assassin knows- worse, what she's told her teammates. 

The last thing she wants to do is bare her soul to her enemies, but it's not like she has a choice. She never has a choice. 

She has no idea how much they already know; if they know she's from Hydra, if they know she was brainwashed, if they know everything she's been forced to do. She suspects that that was also part of Romanoff's plan. Her breathing begins to speed up from panic, and she forces herself to relax. There's no use in getting worked up. All it does is give away you're scared or tense and inhibit your ability to think. She needs to decide how much she can tell them that will both satisfy the assassin and keep enough of her identity secret that her masters won't-

_Don't think about that. Don't._

"We're waiting, Aктив." 

She looks around, studying each one as best she can, gauging their movement, their expression. Wanda's eyes are narrow and tense, as are her shoulders. Her weight is forward, ready either for fight or flight- something the Asset knows well. Barton's weight is on his heels, his arms crossed and a distinct feeling of confidence and ease emanating from him. Rogers looks pained, one hand clenched. She doesn't know if it's in anger at her or at the others and doesn't especially want to find out. Barnes has his arms crossed, metal one on top, muscles tensed and ready to respond; Romanoff is exactly what she was trained to be: a predator poised to pounce. 

She looks straight at the assassin, locking eyes with her. Rule one of interrogation: if you want them to think you're telling the truth, look them in the eye. Although she knows there's no way she could get away with flat-out lying to someone that was trained almost the same way she was, there's a fairly big chance she can tell half-truths. That's what she was taught: always mix truth and lies. Even if they can tell you're lying, they won't be able to figure out which one's which. 

So she keeps her gaze steady, keeps her body relaxed, arms down by her sides, breathing and heart rate even. "As I'm sure you know, Черная Вдова, the training methods used for assassins are..." she pauses, "rather...challenging. Wouldn't you say?" 

Romanoff's eyes narrow, just barely. Just enough to know she's gotten under the Black Widow's skin. "What does this have to do with what I asked?" 

"I-I have flashbacks," she mutters, looking down. It's perhaps overkill, but she blinks a few too many times, as if her eyes are tearing up. "Of my training. I know you do, too, Natalia Romanova." 

"And in these flashbacks, you just so happen to speak the same sentence repeatedly, in  _Russian?"_

She shrugs, even as she allows a tiny spark of victory. The legendary assassin is not so unfeeling after all. She can see it from the shift in the assassin's stance to the way her arms twitch, as if she either wants to cross them protectively over herself or punch something (most likely that something being her). 

"I have no idea what I'm saying," she snorts, rolling her eyes, "You do realize that during flashbacks, you're not exactly cognizant?"

"What, exactly, was your flashback about?" Romanoff asks next. 

She shrugs. "Can't remember." 

"You were crying, hyperventilating, banging on the glass, and babbling, but you have no idea what it was about?" Rogers makes to say something, but Romanoff cuts him a glance, then turns back to the Asset, eyebrow raised. "I call bullshit." 

She's tempted to say something sarcastic about being brainwashed, but that could possibly give too much away. Instead, she just shrugs again. Romanoff takes a step forward until she's practically touching the glass. In a tone as deadly quiet as the creature she was named after, she says, "I know you remembered something about Steve and Bucky. And I know exactly what Hydra has put you through. You have one more chance to come clean before I tell the entire team everything I know about you, including exactly what I heard you say." 

She narrows her eyes, refusing to back down. "I know exactly what the KGB has put you through," she mimics, just as quiet, "And I know exactly what they made you into. There's no way you would ever tell them everything. You're incapable of having friends without keeping some kind of leverage to use against them at all times."

Romanoff blinks, almost long enough to be termed a wince. She regrets having to say it to her; it was a low blow, and not one she's proud of, but there's no other way to win against the legendary Black Widow of the Red Room.

"Do you want to bet on that, Asset?" the assassin asks, low and dangerous. 

She shrugs, pretending to stifle a yawn. "If you really want to, I suppose," she replies, loud enough everyone can hear her. "I don't really care one way or another. I don't have any money, you see." 

Romanoff's lips quirk up fractionally. "You know, I'd really like you if we were on the same side." 

"Not like differing loyalties has ever stopped you from that before," Barton cuts in, looking bored. Romanoff glares at him and he backs up, holding his hands out in surrender. "Okay, okay, that was uncalled for. But seriou-" 

"Barton. Either shut up or get the hell out." 

The archer gives her an offended glare. "Aw, come on, Nat-"

"Shut up. Or  _get out."_

"And here I thought we were friends," Barton complains. "Alright, fine. I'll shut up now." 

Romanoff rolls her eyes, mouthing something that looks like  _idiot,_ before turning her attention back to the Asset. "I'm still waiting, Актив." _Aктив._ Even the name is a threat; a veiled one, yes, but still a threat. There's a reason Romanoff only speaks it in Russian, a language none of the others are fluent in. 

And she has to admit that the Black Widow has won. Even though there's little chance the assassin will tell them everything about the Asset, there's nothing keeping her from saying just enough to make her situation rather unenviable. So, even though it hurts her pride a little, she lifts her head and glares straight into Romanoff's eyes and says, "I was trained in many places, most of them Russian. It shouldn't surprise you that they were rather...brutal. You Russians aren't exactly renowned for your gentleness." 

Belatedly, she realizes that that was probably the wrong thing to say. Now everyone's going to think she was hyperventilating over what they'll probably think of as a  _boot camp._ As if their opinions of her couldn't get any lower; now they'll think she's a crybaby or something. Surprisingly (although she really needs to stop being surprised by now), Barton's expression doesn't change in the least. Neither does Barnes', but Rogers' and Wanda's expressions turn pitying. She wants to slap them- she doesn't want pity, especially not from her fucking enemies! 

Romanoff says nothing, merely raises an eyebrow, as if to say  _you can do better than that._ Personally, the Asset agrees, but what's done is done. No use crying over spilt milk, as the saying goes. 

"I find it hard to believe that training, even by your harsh Russians, would engender that kind of reaction from you," Barnes says, something almost like contempt flashing in his eyes. 

 _Wow. Jerk, much?_ She mentally adds him to the list of people she wants to punch (first place, right before Rogers and Wanda) but for right now, settles for glaring at him. Somewhere in the more logical part of her brain, she knows he's only saying it to snap her cap- rile her up- get her mad- whatever the hell kids use these days- so she'll say something important accidentally, but it's still annoying. 

She continues glaring at him, wishing she had  _any_ memory of him at all. Of him, not of Rogers gushing over his best friend, Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, the best man to ever live. Honestly, from what she's seen so far, Rogers really oversold him- he's a total dick. She  _did_ try to kill him, of course, which might qualify some of his behavior, but it's been weeks! It's almost three weeks since she tried to do that to him, come on! It's about time the knucklehead got over it already. It's not even as if he's deathly afraid of her; that she'd be okay with, but  _no,_ he's just being a colossal piece of shit. 

"Yeah, well, maybe  _you_ should go through what I did and see if you can keep up that same brave face and snide attitude," she seethes, eyes narrowed, "Your contemptuous attitude is, to put simply, appalling, and honestly makes me glad we're not on the same side." 

Barnes looks somewhere between offended, surprised, and interested, like he's not used to being told off- especially not by a woman. She imagines that, back in the 40s, the porcelain dolls women were made out to be didn't have the mental strength to tell off a man, let alone an attractive one, no matter what he did. 

No- not imagines. She knows. She...she lived in the 40s. Right? 

She sneers, her own contempt exhibited on her face. She  _hates_ ladies' men. Hates their egos, their 'boys will be boys' attitude, the disgusting way they flirt with  _everyone..._

"For someone that claims to have no memories of her past life, you sure seem to hate this guy," Romanoff cuts in, sounding faintly amused. 

"I very much dislike egotistical  _boys_ who think they can get away with anything simply because they're attractive." 

"How the hell did you get that!?" Rogers demands, somewhere between confused and annoyed. 

"Look,  _sweetie,"_ she says, practically hissing the word out, "I've lived in a society that's been hostile to women for almost a century now. I can recognize a- what do they call them these days? _Fuckboys?_ I can recognize a fuckboy when I see one."

Romanoff sighs. "As much as I appreciate the girl-power, this really wasn't necessary-"

"I don't fuckin' care," the Asset mutters. She looks over at Rogers, who's...smiling? "What?" 

"I've missed you, Tempest," he says, eyes laughing. "You were the only woman who ever dared to cuss back then- well, except Peggy." 

"Who's Peggy?" 

"...no one," Rogers says, too quickly. She smirks inwardly; now she has something to use against him- because there's no way Peggy could be alive today if he knew her in the 40s. Honestly, this Rogers guy is way too easy; if Barnes wasn't around, he'd be long dead. Despite his...less than attractive personality, she  _does_ have to admit Barnes is a superb soldier- even if he doesn't quite have control of his metal arm yet. 

"Okay, seriously, this was supposed to be an interrogation of our  _hostage,"_ Romanoff says, exasperated. "How has she now ended up questioning  _you?"_

"Capsicle's a real pushover, to be honest." 

Instantly, nausea swells in her stomach. Stark. Because this situation couldn't get any worse.

"Tony," Rogers greets. "You haven't missed anything." 

"Well, if you don't count our hostage here full-on ranting about how much she hates fuckboys, and by extension, Bucky Barnes, then no, you haven't," Barton cuts in.

"Hang on, what? Winter Boy got burned and I wasn't there to witness it?"

"More like thawed," Wanda mutters, "Since he's such an icy guy." 

Barnes exchanges a _why is everyone ganging up on me now_ look with Rogers. Rogers just shrugs. 

"We were just getting down to the fun part of the interrogation when you came in, Tony," Romanoff says next, somewhere between exasperated and exhausted. "We just started gathering intel." 

The Asset's gaze flickers to the ground. What if...what if Stark...

 _No. No, he wouldn't-_ she tries to console herself, but instantly cuts herself off.  _There's no one that would stop him if he tried to get information out that way. Rogers might condemn torture, but even he can easily be overruled._

She takes a deep breath. No matter what they do to her, it's nothing-  _nothing-_ compared to what's already been done. They could tear her apart, bone by bone, sinew by sinew, and muscle by muscle, put her back together again, and still it would not even  _compare_ to what Hydra has put her through. What they have done to her goes far beyond physical. 

_"Are you alright?"_

She jerks, eyes going straight to Wanda. The rest of the Avengers don't seem to notice, continuing their discussion as before.  _"How the hell are you inside my head?"_ she half-screams, feeling violated.  _"I thought you couldn't get in?"_

_"Not usually, but there are times when you drift away from the present, when you stop...thinking, I guess? You lose focus, and it allows me to get into your mind. It's still very difficult, though."_

_"Am I the only one that can do that to you?"_

Wanda shrugs, but not physically.  _"Pretty much. Pietro can also kind of do it, but it's because I've trained him to. You're the first one I've seen with a resistance this strong. It's quite interesting."_ She pauses.  _"But that's beside the point. What's wrong?"_

The Asset looks at the Avengers for a moment, tuning in to a snippet of their conversation. As she comes back to the present, the urge to push Wanda out become stronger, but she resists it, fading back into her mind again.  _"I'd lie, but I have a feeling that won't work with you."_

She doesn't know why she feels...not  _safe,_ but comfortable, with the telepath. She supposes maybe it's because of Wanda's promise not to tell anyone what had happened- even more, that Wanda had, to the best of her knowledge,  _kept_ that promise.  _"Just...memories. Bad ones."_

 _"You're afraid of something,"_ Wanda notes, something in her tone suggesting she has a suspicion but is too polite to voice it.

She stays silent. 

_"What is it?"_

Silence. She senses Wanda going further into her mind. 

 _"You're afraid of_ Tony?  _What has he done to you?"_

 _"It's...it's not what he has_   _done. It's what he could_   _do."_

She gets the feeling Wanda's getting impatient.  _"Which is?"_

She purses her lips, shaking her head. 

_"Look, голубка, I'm a telepath. I have already kept a secret of yours, and I will keep this one, too."_

She sighs.  _"Very well."_ With a barely concealed shudder, she breaks down a barrier inside her mind, allowing Wanda access. It feels weird, almost like she's being violated, but she manages to tolerate it until Wanda's done. 

She senses Wanda's sigh.  _"I'm the last one to ever condone Tony Stark, but that is not the kind of man he is. He would never torture a human being, not even for information."_

_"Are you sure?"_

_"Yes. That is not who he is."_

She hesitates.  _"Why should I believe you?"_

_"Have I ever given you a reason not to?"_

_"No, but..."_ She trails off, not finishing her sentence. Wanda seems to get what she's saying, however, and says,  _"I'm not trying to win you over to our team. The Captain can do that; my job is to help you."_

 _"But how do I_ know  _that?"_

She feels Wanda shrug.  _"I can't really force you to believe something. If you were weaker, I could for a short period of time, but even that would wear off, and you are far stronger than anyone else I've ever encountered. If you're going to believe me, you'll have to figure that out for yourself."_

She snorts. Well, wasn't that helpful.

_"I can only do so much, голубка."_

"Hey." A voice pulls her out of her silent conversation with Wanda and she turns to it. 

Barnes.Of _course._ She gives him a glare. 

"What do you want." 

He sighs, annoyed. "Look, I know you like denying the three of us were friends, but you can't deny you have the accent." 

"What? My accent is just American. I don't have any particular one." 

"Maybe now you don't, but earlier you did." He exchanges a look with Rogers, as if to say  _why couldn't you talk to her instead of making me do it?_

"...No, I'm pretty sure I didn't. I don't just change accents without knowing I did it." 

"Jesus on a jumpin' jack, for an assassin, you're fuckin' clueless!" Barnes exclaims. She tilts her head. Interesting; his usually subtle New York accent gets very pronounced when he's mad.

Hang on...is he saying...?

"You think I have a New York accent." 

"Not all the time," Rogers quickly cuts in, "But a few minutes ago, you had it. I know that's not the kinda thing you woulda been taught, and I know you know that, too. Your accent is genuine, which means there's only one way you could've gotten it." 

She feels the beginning of a headache begin to throb and wishes this conversation had never taken place. Seriously, she'd almost rather take Romanoff's interrogation over this, torture and all. 

"So I lived in New York when I was growing up, what does that matter?"

"Well, how old are you?" Stark asks, exasperated. 

She locks eyes with Romanoff, who rolls her eyes, already anticipating the answer. "Never ask a lady her age," she replies sweetly. Stark groans. 

"No offense, but we're fairly certain you've been alive since the 1920s at least," Rogers interjects calmly, "Which makes you roughly the same age as me and Bucky."

"Bucky and I," she corrects, for no other purpose than to avoid answering. 

"And you know what that means, right?" He continues, ignoring her. "It means we grew up in the same state, at the same time."

"So?" 

Barnes sighs so loud the receptionist on the bottom floor can probably hear it. "Just give it up, Steve. She's hopeless." 

Rogers gives him a look, but seems to concede temporary defeat. "Alright, but think about what I said, Tempest, okay?" 

"Yeah, whatever." She waves a hand, willing her eyes not to tear up even as they turn to leave. In less than a minute, they're all gone, even Barton and Romanoff. Still, she knows there's no way they aren't still watching her. So she closes her eyes and leans forward, rolling off her seat to lie face down on the ground.

And then, when she's hidden from view, that's when she cries. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comment? Bar the first few chapters, I haven't really gotten many comments and I don't know if you guys are liking what I'm doing with this fic. If you have any suggestions, or just want to put in your two cents, I'd love to hear them!


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